Sleepwalker
by Roland 'Jim' Lowery
Summary: Part 1 of the Sleepwalker series.  A long-term field trip for the entire high school seems like a bounty of good fortune.  But during a stopover to spend the night in the small town of Erbie, something terrible awakens and the hunts begins . . .
1. Stage 1

The following short story is based on characters created and/or copyrighted by Glenn Eichler, Susie Lewis Lynn, and MTV. All other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery.

The author gives full permission to distribute this work freely, as long as no alterations are made and the exchange of monetary units is not involved. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or complaints should be sent to **esn1g(at)yahoo(dot)com**. Thank you.

* * *

"The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest.  
The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being.  
Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows."  
-Gaston Bachelard

* * *

**Sleepwalker**  
by Roland 'Jim' Lowery

_The little girl desperately wishes to fall asleep._

_It is an almost nightly chore, the struggle to find just a few more precious minutes of sleep before she is called upon to go back out into the world to suffer its slings and arrows. It's so much easier to bear when she's gotten a proper eight hours, but those days are few and far between. Most night, like this one, continue in frustrated silence as she stares helplessly at the ceiling and hopes for a reprieve._

_She has little understanding of this affliction. Mommy and daddy have sent her to doctors and clinics, spending as much and sometimes more than they can afford to find a reason if not a cure behind the insomnia, but to little avail. It is simply her unnatural condition, to remain awake when by all rights she should be asleep, dreaming dreams of far away lands of magic and mystery._

_The little girl sighs into the darkness and turns to fluff her pillow. The ritual has just as much affect as it usually does, that is to say none at all. She looks around her room, picking out her toys and furniture in the dim light of the moon streaming through her window._

_She has no night light. She doesn't need one. Unlike other children her age, she knows quite well that there aren't any monsters in her room. Nothing lurking under the bed. Nothing skulking in the closet. She knows because she's checked hundreds if not thousands of times. Sometimes she still does so just so she can have something to do during her sleepless nights._

_Setting her stuffed cat Mr. Lumpkins aside, she swings her legs over the side of the bed and prepares to turn on the light and do some exercises. Exercising was one of the methods the doctors tried to get her to sleep, by wearing her out. It worked only rarely, but still often enough that she figures it might be worth a shot._

_The light does not turn on. She turns the switch on the lamp cord again, but there is still no response from the bulb, not even a brief flicker of the filament within. She shrugs off the anomaly as just a busted light and makes her way unerringly across the room to hit the wall switch to turn on the overhead light._

_It remains stubbornly dark as well, which causes the child no small measure of annoyance. Daddy payed the bill for the electricity. She knows because she helped him affix the stamp to the envelope herself. She looks back at her bed to see the soft red glow of her alarm clock sitting on the nightstand just to be sure, then frowns deeply._

_The little girl asks herself, what are the chances that both lights blow out at the same time? She isn't sure, especially since math - let alone probabilities study - wasn't exactly her best subject in school. But it still seems pretty unlikely._

_The small hairs on the back of her neck suddenly prickle, and it takes her a few moments to realize that she's starting to feel a little creeped out. The idea of monsters in her room suddenly seems less fanciful than before, and she almost imagines that she could be convinced a random assortment of toys sitting in the corner is really the shadow of a nasty kid-eating goblin._

_But she keeps her wits about her. She ventures back across her room carefully, intent on procuring the flashlight that sits between the mattress and box springs of her bed. It is usually used for reading books under the covers late at night, but now she feels that it is necessary for a higher purpose, that being bedroom security._

_A wind picks up outside the window and trees rustle as autumn leaves are torn from their limbs to gradually fall to the grass below. She tightens her courage into a hard knot and keeps moving, ignoring the horror movie quality of the sound. She's watched horror movies before. She knows she's not necessarily old enough to do so, but they never scared her before._

_The little girl is definitely scared now. She reaches her bed and slides her hand under the mattress, nearly panicking when she doesn't find the flashlight in its customary spot. She shifts her hand to the left and grasps the shaft of the light in relief, pulling it out and flicking it on._

_A cone of light bursts forth from the flashlight's bulb, bouncing off the goggle-like eyes of the man standing in the middle of her room._

_The little girl screams, then wakes up with a start._

_She looks around her room, desperately hoping that she is truly alone in the darkness._

* * *

"Jeez, Morgendorffer, you look like you've been chugging coffee for a month straight."

"Thank you, Lane, for that sterling example of friendship in action. Would you also like to tell me that I look like I hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down?"

"Maybe later," Jane said with a half-shrug. "Seriously, though, are you okay? You look beat."

"I wish I could give you some exotic reason behind my current pallid exterior," Daria said, "but alas, it is pedestrian-grade lack of sleep. The insomnia bug has bitten, and I cannot resist its siren call."

Jane smirked. "Well now, it hasn't seemed to have dulled your penchant for pontificating in the pedantic."

"Clever."

"Thank you. Have you tried taking anything?"

Daria sighed and rubbed her eyes before answering. "I've tried taking _everything_," she complained. "I'm this close to ODing on virgin hot milk toddies. I'm thinking about breaking into the liquor cabinet and skipping the virgin part."

The bell rang, putting an end to their conversation before Jane could add another undoubtedly smart remark. The two girls moved with the herd chugging through the halls of the school until they reached their first class of the morning, Language Arts with Mr. O'Neill.

It seemed at first that everything was going to continue in its regular humdrum way. O'Neill attributed several bits of pop psychobabble to many poor novels and short stories that didn't deserve such shameful treatment. Kevin and Brittany contributed several wildly incorrect answers that O'Neill's questions almost certainly didn't deserve . . . maybe. Daria and Jane traded notes and sketches back and forth as they tried to stave off boredom.

But just as Daria was starting to feel like her insomnia was waning and she might finally be able to catch a few Z's before the start of the next class, the speaker sitting near the ceiling of the classroom suddenly squealed to life and began to spew forth the commanding voice of Ms. Li, the school principal.

"_Attention students of Laaaaaawndale High!_" she said in that imperious tone few people outside of royalty seemed to be able to muster. "_Due to the outstanding performance of the Laaaaaawndale Lions in this year's football season, I - I mean, **we** have managed to procure a record amount of donations for the school from local individuals and organizations!_"

There was some scattered applause in the classroom punctuated by all of the cheerleaders and all of the football players except Mack jumping up and down in their seats and yelling "Woo!" intermittently.

"_Unfortunately,_" Li continued, oblivious to the minor disruptive behavior she had caused, "_a certain percentage of these donations must go toward certain clubs and activities, such as the . . . ergh, the chess club and recycling night at the park. However, a nice healthy chunk somehow managed to be appropriated for field trip activities, activities who's location and purpose are under my personal purview! And so this year it has been decided that all high school grades shall be allowed to join me - I mean, the Laaaaaawndale High faculty as we spend a rollicking day at the Mid City Museum of the Sciences!_

"_Yes, yes, I know, but despite its name, it is actually a thinly disguised fun house with a massive gift shop filled with toys for all ages!_" Li erupted into cackling laughter, but quickly got herself back under control. "_But that, of course, is our little secret, and should any parents or superintendents ask, the trip is, of course, purely educational in nature. Oh, and considering Mid City's distance from Laaaaaawndale, we will also be having a stopover at a budget motel for the night on the way up. Back to learning, everyone!_"

Most of the last of Li's speech was drowned out by genuine cheering. Unheard by all but a few was the brief, distant, "_There, that should keep the little bastards happy. What? Oh,_" before the PA system finally went silent.

Jane laughed. "Wow, she _must_ have made quite a windfall to be that up front about everything, and so generous to boot," she said. "Almost seems a little more suspicious than usual, eh, Dari-"

She cut herself off when she looked over to find her friend leaned back in her chair, eyes closed and chest rising and falling evenly with the blissful escape of sleep.

* * *

"And so the week's respite . . . is OVER!"

High-strung history teacher Anthony DeMartino's eye bulged and his nostrils flared as he crossed his arms and surveyed the mass of teenaged humanity spread out before him. Though Lawndale was not by any means a particularly large or densely populated school district, he found that trying to help herd everyone grades 9 through 12 who had managed to get their permission slips signed looked as if it was going to be just as arduous and impossible as he had been fearing over the past seven days.

"HEY! Put that poor garbage can DOWN! You don't know where it's BEEN!"

Still, despite the sisyphean nature of his task, he planned to tackle it with all his might. Hannibal had managed his elephants, and DeMartino planned to manage his own, even if said elephants took the form of several dozen giggling, squealing, shouting, arguing, troublemaking, disagreeable high school students. All he needed to do was to get them from the school doors and into the convoy of buses awaiting them without any bone fractures, fires, or international incidents occurring.

"BROOKE! CREEPY GUY WITH THE SUNGLASSES! If you do not stop _making out_ this VERY SECOND, I will LITERALLY glue your faces together _for the entire field trip!_ Now GET IN LINE!"

Easy.

"Now now, Anthony. There's no reason to be so cross with the children. We're _all_ working toward the same goal."

DeMartino turned his head to glare briefly at Claire DeFoe, the school's art teacher, who despite her calm words seemed to be struggling just as hard to keep the mass contained. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her reach out and gently steer a stumbling young man back into the stampede passing by.

"Perhaps this is _your_ idea of FUN, Ms. DeFoe," he growled back at her, "but for those of us who still haven't gotten their AFTERNOON COFFEE BREAK and will be _traversing the countryside_ with a bunch of EMPTY-HEADED _INGRATES_, it leaves much to be desired and _rattles the nerves a bit_."

Claire smiled lightly at the tirade and asked, "So, what did Dr. Florence have to say about your blood pressure medication?"

DeMartino's face dropped and turned as pale as a sheet. "It, uh," he stammered, "well, he said that it _seemed_ to be working _okay_, but uh, I should TRY . . . ahem, I should _try_ to be a little _calmer_ to help it along."

The tide of teenagers began to ebb. As the two teachers walked behind the students to make sure none of them tried pulling anything just because they were at the back of the line, Claire patted DeMartino's shoulder kindly.

"That sounds like very good advice," she said. DeMartino merely grumbled in return and looked as if he were ready to spout cartoonish steam from his ears.

The two rental buses gleamed silver and red in the mid-afternoon sunlight while the three regular school buses sitting behind them seemed dull and lifeless by comparison. Even through his funk, DeMartino could see the difference and guessed that Li probably could, too. He predicted that the next time the school had a surplus of funds, some of it would be going directly into wax and new paint jobs instead of where it belonged, in the budget for the teachers' raises.

The drivers were standing next to the doors, greeting the students as they boarded. Claire plucked DeMartino's shirt sleeve and pointed at the lead rental bus where there seemed to be some kind of confrontation going on.

Sandi Griffin crossed her arms and fixed the bus driver with a venomous glare. "I'm afraid," she was saying, "that you simply do not understand the extra care and - most importantly - _equipment_ that remaining this fashionably cute requires."

"I'm afraid I _do_ understand that all luggage was to be checked in this morning," the driver returned, "that only one carry-on bag is allowed, and that all four of you aren't getting on this bus with all that . . . _stuff_."

"Oh, come on," Quinn Morgendorffer wheedled as she gestured at the four bags of cosmetics and accessories hanging from her shoulders. "I'm carrying all of this _myself!_ Surely that should tell you how important it is!"

"Yaaaaaaaah, like, give us a breaaaaaaak," Tiffany Blum-Deckler droned in support of her fellow Fashion Club members.

The driver stood his ground. "No breaks, no extra bags, no way, no how," he told them. "One carry-on only, the rest has gotta stay here."

Sandi tossed her head angrily, sending her long auburn hair flying for a second. She tapped her foot, then rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, very well. We shall simply have to suffer through these dark and trying times until the oppression of the beautiful is recognized and stamped out once and for all." She shrugged off all of her bags except a single heavy purse, then handed the excess to the mousy girl in pigtails standing next to her.

"Here, Stacy," she said, barely looking at the other girl. "Since you are currently carrying less than the rest of us as if you required fewer beauty products than we do or something, you shall have the honor of carrying our bags back to the school."

Stacy Rowe's expression fell, but only for a moment. Cheery disposition put firmly back into place, she shouldered the proffered luggage and then grabbed Quinn and Tiffany's makeup cases and overnight bags as well. "Uh, sure thing, Sandi!" she said even as she strained under the weight.

As the three other girls boarded the bus, Stacy staggered her way through the crowd on her way back to the school. She muttered the occasional apology as she bumped into people. Straps dug into her shoulders through her denim jacket and handles seemed to get heavier and harder to grip in her hands, but she persevered. It was the least she could do for her friends.

Sweat began to trickle from her forehead from the exertion, no matter how hard she tried to keep it in. One bead hit her eyebrow, raised up over the ridge, and then fell - _plop!_ - to the ground below, mortifying her. Girls didn't sweat, especially not members of the Fashion Club, and _most_ especially not in front of other people!

Just as the panic attack was about to set in in earnest, Ms. DeFoe's voice called out her name. "Are you alright, dear?" the older woman asked. "We're supposed to be boarding the busses now."

Stacy looked up to see that Ms. DeFoe was standing right in front of her, with Mr. DeMartino glowering just a few feet behind. "Eep!" she squeaked just before a flood of words started flowing out of her mouth. "I'm sorry I know but Sandi and Quinn and Tiffany had too much and they couldn't so I'm bringing this back that is if it's okay with you and I don't mean to cause any trouble but I need to hurry so I can get back in time to-"

"Yes, okay, okay," Claire was saying, holding her hands up to try and stop the barrage. "It's alright, Stacy. Here, let me help you with some of that. We'll take all of it back to my classroom for safekeeping until we get back tomorrow, alright?"

Stacy seemed to deflate as all the air rushed from her lungs in relief. "Thank you, Ms. DeFoe," she said, allowing the teacher to grab some of the load from her shoulders. "I'm really sorry about this, really, it'll never happen again, I promise!"

"It's not a problem at all," Claire said cheerfully. "There's plenty of time before we head out, and I'm sure the others are saving you a seat."

"Uh, yah," Stacy said, looking back at the line of buses nervously. "I'm sure they are."

The art room wasn't very far in from the main doors, making it a quick trip. Claire unlocked the door deftly and they stepped into the dim space, the only illumination being sunlight streaming in through the high windows. Small clouds of dust from chalk, plaster, and other such art supplies played fitfully in the beams of light before Claire hit the light switch and drowned them out.

"Here we are," she said. "Just set everything down behind my desk, dear, and the janitorial staff should leave it alone. You and your friends just remind me that it's here and I'll open the door for you when we get back."

"_Thank_ you, Ms. DeFoe!" Stacy gushed as she dropped everything to the floor.

"You're quite welcome, Stacy," Claire said graciously. "Now let's hurry back, shall we?"

Stacy started to follow the teacher out, but once again she felt the trickle of a sweat drop flowing down one of her temples. She froze in terror, then cleared her throat. "Um, actually, if you don't mind," she said, "I think I need to go to the restroom real quick. Would that be okay?"

Ms. DeFoe thought on it for a second, then nodded her head. "Of course. I'll make sure we don't leave without you, but don't take too long!"

"Yes! I mean, no! I won't take too long! Thank you, Ms. DeFoe, thank you!"

It took a few moments for Stacy to remember not to run in the school halls, but she then further remembered that technically school was out for the day, so she picked her pace up again and was at the girl's bathroom in no time. She grabbed a few fistfuls of toilet paper from one of the stalls, zipped back over to the huge wall mirror, and began to lightly dab the sweat she still had clinging to her brow.

Some of her makeup came up with it, but she resolved not to worry about it until she was back on the bus. Having to do some touching up in front of the other girls was a small price to pay to keep them from seeing that she had actually perspired. It was simply unthinkable.

After getting one last spot, she set the toilet paper aside and looked herself over meticulously. Finally satisfied that she had gotten everything, she leaned back and screamed when she saw a man with goggle-like eyes standing behind her in the mirror, staring down at her.

She whirled around, but before she could see whether or not there was really someone there, the lights went off, plunging the room into darkness. Taking no more chances, she burst from the bathroom at a full run, skidded across the hallway floor, and lit out like a rocket for the school's main doors.

The entire building was dark, the janitors having apparently shut everything off for the day. That mundane detail was lost on Stacy, however, as she pelted through the corridor, the already creepy surroundings of an empty school seeming even more menacing with every step. She felt trapped, like she was caught suffocating under miles of water.

Sunlight erupted around her as she hit the release lever on the exit door. She ran straight for the bus her friends had boarded, overjoyed to see that there were still a few other people waiting to get on. Thoughts of the strange man she thought she had seen fragmented and scattered as she climbed the steps into the vehicle and moved to take her seat.

Her relief was short-lived and turned back into horror as she saw Tiffany and Sandi sitting together in one set of seats while Quinn and Tori Jericho shared another set. Stacy suppressed a horrible thought about the obviously bottle-blonde Tori, then scanned frantically for any open seat next to a popular person, _any_ popular person.

But there was only one seat left available in the entire bus. Stacy's heart dropped into her stomach as she saw that it was right across from Quinn's so-called cousin and her art friend, but then it dropped even further when she stepped up to the row and saw who she would be sitting next to.

"Why hello, my lost little lamb," the skinny red-head purred as he patted the seat next to him and gave her a greasy smile. "Don't be afraid. I don't bite . . . _hard_."

Stacy groaned and wondered briefly if she had escaped from a mirror ghost that wanted to suck out her soul only to have jumped blindly into a far worse fate.

* * *

"Heeeey, babe," Kevin Thompson said as smoothly as he could, his dopey bedroom eyes in full effect.

"Yes, Kevvie?" Brittany Taylor cooed back, her bubblepop voice turned just a couple of notches down from its usual squeak.

"I totally got something, like, extra special for this field trip."

Brittany's heart skipped a beat as visions of jewelry and other delights began to dance in her head. "Oh?" she said nonchalantly. "And what would _that_ be, sweetie-Kevs?"

"Well, I'll show you," he said seductively, then reached up to grab his duffel bag from the overhead rack. He pulled the zipper across with a flourish, then slowly put his hand inside and pulled out a wrapped package to hand to his excited girlfriend.

"Oh, Kevvie!" Brittany squealed as she tore open the wrapper. "It's . . . it's . . . it's a paintball mask?"

She stared down at the box in her hands, the clear plastic front showing off the contours of a black and forest green facemask with filtered breathing holes, a wide visor sitting over its slightly tinted viewport, and an adjustable cloth strap in the back.

"Heck yah, it's a paintball mask!" Kevin said proudly. "Top of the line and everything. It's got, like, features and stuff!"

"Well, okay, babe, I mean, I _like_ it, don't get me wrong or anything," she said gingerly, "but . . . _why_ did you get me a paintball mask?"

"For the _paintball_, babe! Y'know, the field trip we're on? Like, right now?"

Brittany stared at him aghast. "Kevvie, that was the _last_ field trip we were on!"

"Yah? So?"

"So not _every_ field trip we go on is going to be to play paintball, you . . . you . . . _oooh!_"

Jane chuckled under her breath as Brittany started swatting Kevin repeatedly with the box he had just given her. They were too far forward in the bus for her to hear exactly what they had been talking about, but she wasn't above enjoying a little bit of slapstick comedy now and again.

_Besides,_ she thought with a mental sigh, _it sure beats the mile a minute action going on back here._

Turning her head to the right, she sat and watched Daria snore softly in the chair next to her. The bespectacled brunette was still having to get her sleep when and where she could catch it, her inexplicable insomnia still troubling her. Jane had tried to reassure her that it happened to everyone every once in a while, but since it had been over a week, Daria had started considering going to a doctor to get it checked out.

Jane was content to leave her best friend to her slumber, but in the meantime it meant she was going insane from sheer boredom. Even trying to get some sketching done had lost its allure after the first few hours of the ride, especially considering how rickety the bus' suspension seemed to be.

She tapped her fingers on the side of her chair for a few moments before finally resorting to her last hope for entertainment. She turned slightly in her seat, leaned across the aisle, and hissed, "_Psst!_"

Stacy had been staring into space when she heard the whispered summons. She stiffened, realizing immediately who was trying to get her attention, and quickly closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. Jane was not so easily put off, however, and soon the artist's thin fingers were plucking at her jacket sleeve.

"What?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth.

"Just thought you might like to talk or something," Jane whispered. On Stacy's other side was the sleeping form of Charles "Upchuck" Ruttheimer III, notoriously the worst skirtchaser in the entire school, and she had no desire whatsoever to stir him.

After gulping down the knot that had suddenly formed in her throat, Stacy said, "Um . . . no, I don't think so. Sorry."

Jane snorted. "What, worried your fellow fashion fiends might see you sharing conversation with someone less popular than you?" She jerked her head to the front of the bus. "Look at 'em. They're not even paying attention. And come ooooon . . . you've gotta be just as bored as I am!"

Stacy leaned out a little into the aisle to see that Jane was telling the truth. Sandi, Tiffany, Quinn, and Tori were all locked deep in their own little world, probably talking about all the current fashion faux pas to avoid without her, meaning that she was almost certainly going to commit one or more fashion crimes over the next month simply through ignorance.

Realizing that she was indeed quite bored and already in her own personal popularity hell anyway, Stacy sighed, "Okay, I guess. What do you want to talk about?"

Jane started making faces as she tried to rummage up some topic that the two of them might have in common. As she racked her brains, she berated herself for not thinking that far ahead. She'd been fairly certain that she'd be completely rebuffed and that her only entertainment would be bothering Stacy for a few moments.

"Uh," she said after a while, " . . . what's your favorite color?"

Stacy's entire face lit up and she reached across the aisle to grab Jane's hand. "Oh, there was this cute little bright cerulean top I saw at Cashman's the other day!" she jabbered as quietly as she could manage, her voice occasionally hitting high-pitched squeals in excitement. "It was just that perfect shade, you know, and it had this neat little fringe just a few inches from the bottom, just high enough to sit over the belt line so you can still tuck the hem in if you want, and-"

"Uh-huh," Jane said intermittently as Stacy continued to drone on. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-_huh_."

_Aw, jeez,_ she thought as she began looking back at her previous boredom with the fond longing of nostalgia, _what did I just let loose?_

"-but anyway, you just can't get a stain like that out, no matter what you use, not even with my super secret bleach and ammonia formula. And that reminds me of this one time I ended up in the hospital with this weird poison ivy rash, but I hadn't been near poison ivy in, like, _years_, so-"

Everything seemed to dissolve into a haze in which it seemed Stacy took neither a break from talking or even a breath in between sentences. Her words all flowed into one another as time itself began to lose all meaning and Jane found herself beginning to note each and every contour of that great cosmic navel.

She blinked a few times to clear the glaze from her eyes when she realized that the other girl had eventually stopped speaking and was looking at her expectantly.

"I'm . . . sorry?" she mumbled slowly. "What was that?"

"I asked what _your_ favorite color was!" Stacy replied cheerfully.

"Oh," Jane said, then thought for a second. "Um . . . black."

Stacy blinked rapidly. "Black?" she repeated.

"Uh . . . yes. Black."

"Oh. Well. It goes with everything, I guess?"

"Yep. That it does."

"Yes."

Jane and Stacy smiled briefly and awkwardly at one another for a few seconds, then turned forward in their seats and remained silent for the rest of the trip.

* * *

Nick's Inn and the Erbie Motel occupied an unusual but, for the weary travelers from Lawndale High, helpful location.

The town of Erbie itself sat on a highway exit just a little past halfway between Lawndale and Mid City. It was extremely small, as it served almost entirely as a tourist trap for those traveling to or from Mid City, offering only three gas stations, a diner, a small post office attached to an enormous souvenir shop, and the two motels, which sat right across the road from each other.

It was difficult for any of the teachers or students to tell if anyone who worked in Erbie actually lived there, since there didn't appear to be any houses nearby, just endless stretches of flat, mostly grassless plains blocked off by long lengths of barbed wire. Looking out the windows of the buses, some of the students claimed they could see cows off in the distance, but as no one else could make out these phantom cattle the subject was quickly deemed boring and was dropped.

The sun had nearly gone down by the time the convoy pulled into Erbie Motel's parking lot, which was completely spare except for an old model sedan and a large van that looked as if it had been painted over with house paint. Nick's Inn, as far as anyone could see, was completely deserted, and both motels stood as evidence that tourist season hadn't started yet and probably wouldn't for at least a few more months.

Principal Angela Li was the first to step down onto the cracked asphalt. She took a few steps forward and inhaled a deep breath of the fresh spring air, then exhaled it back out into the cooling evening sky. She then turned to the row of buses behind her and held her hands into the air dramatically.

"All ashore, everyone!" she called out, motioning to the drivers and teachers to start getting the children disembarked.

Getting several dozen teenagers out of the over-sized tin cans naturally proved to be much easier than getting them in. Ms. Barch, the science teacher, remarked on how the flow of the human mass seemed quite like the organic movement of an explosion, then used that to segue into a rant about how men were ruining the world with their bombs and their guns and their horrible action movies. The other teachers around her suddenly noticed several other places in the parking lot they needed to be and quickly moved to them before she really got started.

"Alright, listen UP!" Mr. DeMartino shouted, getting everyone's attention once the buses were empty. "We have reserved ROOMS for everyone at BOTH of these _fine establishments_. It has been DE_CIDED_ that everyone will be split into TWO GROUPS! EVERYone with last names starting with the letters _A_ through _M_, you shall be staying HERE at _Erbie_. _N_ through _Z_ - if by some Godforsaken chance we HAVE anyone who's _uncaring parents_ gave them a last name STARTING with _Z_ - will be staying at NICK'S!

"FOUR TO A ROOM, PEOPLE!" he continued sternly. "All MALE and all FEMALE _only!_ As amusing as Jerry Springer may BE, we don't want to see any of OUR STUDENTS making appearances _with their baby mamas or daddies in tow!_ Are we CLEAR?"

As people began moving to the main offices of their respective motels, Stacy stood in the middle and did some quick mental calculation, then did it again and again just to make sure she wasn't mistaken. Right on the verge of hyperventilation, she approached DeMartino and tried to clear her throat to get his attention. All that came out was a strange combination hiccup and squeak.

"Hmm?" the teacher said distractedly as he kept a watchful eye on the departing students. "Oh, Miss _Rowe_. How can I HELP you?"

"Well, um, it's just that, you know . . . "

"NO, Miss Rowe, I'm afraid I do NOT know," he said testily.

The threat that he might actually turn his head and look at her with that one huge bulging eye loosened Stacy's tongue. "It's just that all my friends are going to be over here because of their last names and I'm going to be stuck over on the other side of the road all by myself!"

"Yes, that's quite UNFORTUNATE, my dear," he told her with what sounded like pity at first but eventually turned into snarling sarcasm, "but I do not MAKE the rules, I merely APPLY them with _complete and utter disdain for the feelings of all involved!_"

Stacy twisted the toe of her shoe into the ground nervously. "I know, Mr. DeMartino," she said, "but I was just wondering if maybe I could stay over here for toni-"

DeMartino's head snapped around so he could glare at the irritant at his side, but by the time he'd finished the move, Stacy had already turned tail and fled back toward the buses.

Jane and Daria moved out of the way as the Stacy-rocket tore up to the side of the bus, grabbed all of her bags from the luggage compartment, and then blasted off again in the direction of Nick's Inn, moving almost fast enough to leave a blue denim blur behind her as she ran.

"Wow, that was hard to watch," Jane said as she and Daria resumed tugging their own backpacks out. "I might even feel sorry for her if she hadn't tried to drill my brain out with that story about the sky blue sweater or whatever."

"I'm sorry I missed it," Daria said, sounding as if she wasn't sorry she'd missed it at all.

"Yah, yah," said Jane. With their packs finally dislodged from the mass of nylon wedged into the bus' side, they began their trek to the main office to grab their key. "So how are you feeling after your little power nap, anyway?"

"Completely and utterly awake," Daria groused. "I'm starting to think it's less insomnia and more that my circadian rhythm has done a complete 180. There's no way I'm getting any sleep tonight."

Jane raised her eyebrows in sympathy. "Bummer," she said. "But hey, I tell you what. Just this once, I'll let you play the best-friend card and stay up with you all night so we can both be tired out of our heads tomorrow. Y'know, if you want me to."

"I dunno, aren't you gonna miss all that wild fun and excitement at the Museum of Science?"

"Meh. Four or five hours of having to listen to Ms. Barch try and take the whole trip seriously in between accusations of male hypocrisy? I think sleeping the trip away in the museum lobby is the more rational choice."

They arrived at the office to find Ms. DeFoe standing out front, handing keys out to passing students. The art teacher's face broke into a warm smile when she saw Jane.

"I'm sure you and Daria would like to have a room together, wouldn't you?" she said, pulling a key attached to a giant wedge of plastic from the batch in her hand and giving it to them. "Well, I believe we can accommodate that."

"Can we also accommodate the other two people out of our room and into another?" Daria asked with little hope.

"I'm afraid not, Daria," Claire said sadly. "But you'll be staying with Andrea and Jennifer. You're friends with them, right?"

Daria and Jane glanced at each other. "I guess sharing a room with them is better than a kick to the head," Daria reasoned.

"And by strange coincidence, Andrea will probably be giving out kicks to the head sometime tonight!" Jane added mock cheerfully. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be fine," she reassured Claire when she saw the teacher's stricken expression. "The goth and the burnout meet the brain and the art chick. We'll be in Outcast Heaven, trust me!"

As the two girls moved on and the next group of students came up looking for their keys, Claire reflected solemnly on her own position as the art chick in her own little group, three similar outcasts from her college days that still roomed with her in her loft and basically sucked everything - particularly money, time, and patience - out of her on a regular basis. She was reasonably sure that she hadn't, but some small part of her still imagined that she may have sent Jane and Daria to a similar if shorter termed doom.

She tried to put on her best happy face as the last of the students, the school's Fashion Club, stepped up to her. She gave them the last of the keys and was about to go on to her own room when Sandi cleared her throat loudly and insistently.

"Ex_cuse_ me, like, Ms. DeFoe or whatever," the girl said forcefully, "but you have given us only two keys. Where are the other two?"

"Oh, I'm afraid that this is all the office is allowed to give out," she told them. "The only other keys they have for the rooms are reserved for their housekeeping staff. You'll just have to stick together and be careful not to lock anyone out."

"In that case, I believe _I_ should be the one to hold both copies," Sandi said, turning to the other girls and holding out her hand. "As president of the Fashion Club, I am hereby instating a fashion lockdown until the morning. I believe it is prudent under the circumstances. This town is so _un_fashionable and dusty that it may cause irreparable damage to both our clothing and our senses. Agreed?"

Quinn turned the second key in her hand a few times, her entire body seeming to twist slightly under pressure, but finally gave it up to Sandi with a cheerful look of defeat. "Of _course_, Sandi!" she said as the transfer of power took place. "I was just about to suggest the same thing, but it's much better that _you_ said it."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, girls," Claire suddenly said, "but I just noticed . . . where is Stacy? Isn't she a part of your club?"

Sandi tossed her hair back and stuck her nose up in the air. "Yes, well, due to the capriciousness of fate or whatever, Stacy _Rowe_ is taking an involuntary fashion sabbatical at the other motel."

"And thank goodness, right?" Tori interjected with a nasty laugh. "I mean, it's a real shame," she added quickly if insincerely when she saw the looks Claire and Quinn were giving her. "But rules are rules, and her last name starts with an R!"

As the girls trotted off to their room, Claire watched them go then turned to look at Nick's Inn in the distance. All of her worry about Daria and Jane had dissolved, replaced by a new concern. She briefly considered walking across the street and making sure Stacy was alright, but Ms. Li had wanted all of the teachers to meet after the students had been settled in, and the temperamental principal could be more than a handful if she was kept waiting.

With one last glance over at Nick's, Claire turned and started walking back to the buses for the undoubtedly tedious and pointless meeting ahead.

* * *

"Oh, he_llo_, Stacy! How are you this evening?"

The sickly-sweet tones of Timothy O'Neill's voice hit Stacy's ears like sticky tree sap. She walked up the shallow stairway to the entrance of Nick's, sighed, and said, "I'm fine, Mr. O'Neill, thanks for asking."

"Oh my goodness!" he said, severely distressed at her tone. "It doesn't _sound_ like everything is fine! Is there anything I can do for you? You know, I was just reading about this great form of therapy that involves banging a drum while talking about your problems and innermost thoughts. I think I can find a drum if-"

"No no, Mr. O'Neill!" Stacy said quickly, eyes wide and hands up to defend herself from having to hear about the latest of his unending pop therapy ideas. "I'll be okay, really! Just . . . can I get the key to my room, please? I think I just need to lie down for a while."

O'Neill nodded, his face a too-sincere mask of sympathy. "Of course, of course," he murmured as he handed her a key hanging from a toy alligator, the mascot of Nick's Inn from the look of the garishly lit sign sitting next to the road. "And if you need anything, don't be afraid to come by the teacher's room in 103 and ask for me. I might even have that drum by the time you stop by!"

_Please don't on my account,_ she thought but neglected to say as she hastened to make her getaway.

The Erbie Motel had been painted a bright blue, almost the exact shade that she had tried to tell Jane about earlier, but she could see in the waning light of the sun that Nick's was a filthy brown color that almost but didn't quite resemble mud. The red trimming didn't help any, and in fact looked almost like blood. She stuck out her tongue in disgust and almost bit it in surprise when the parking lot lamps snapped on overhead.

Checking the door numbers against the number on the toy gator, she estimated that her room was located almost at the end of the row. Nick's, just like Erbie across the way, was comprised of three separate buildings forming a U shape, all one story and with a bit of space between them at the corners. She counted herself lucky that she was at the near corner at least instead of the far one. As the lamps gradually warmed up, it became apparent that they washed out everything in their sodium light. She was having a hard enough time as it was that someone needed to see her under suboptimal lighting conditions.

A dark shape stepped out of the shadows into her path and leaned up against one of the supports for the building's overhang. Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest before she saw who it was.

"Oh," she said softly. "Uh, hi, Kevin."

Kevin's eyes dropped down a bit as he struck what he undoubtedly thought was a sexy pose. "Hey, babe."

Stacy looked around her briefly, then said, "Um, Kevin . . . I'm Stacy. Not Brittany."

"Yah, like, I know, babe," he returned, undeterred. "Brittany's not here. That's, like, kind of the point, y'know? Just you . . . and me . . . and the moths . . . "

Looking up, she could see that moths were indeed starting to congregate around the lot lights. "Moths . . . aren't really that romantic, Kevin," she said. "And you've got a girlfriend. And there are strict Fashion Club bylaws which state-"

As she tried to move around him, Kevin quickly sidestepped back into her way. "The Fashion Club in-laws aren't here either," he said. "So why don't you and me go back to my place and . . . _you know_."

Stacy felt disgust run through her entire body as he waggled his eyebrows and leered at her. With a force born of that disgust, she looked him right in the eyes and flatly stated, "Kevin, _no_."

The football player deflated immediately, every pretense of romantic intent gone. "Aw, _really?_" he said. "Aw, man, that, like, totally blows!"

"Yes, but I'm sure that you'll learn to live with it someday," she said as she walked around him and breathed a sigh of relief.

Night was coming down even quicker than before with only deep red surrounding a few swaths of purple indicating the location of the sun on the horizon. Stacy picked up her pace, feeling more desperate than ever to just get inside, set her bags down, and fall into a nice, deep sleep, but once again she found her path blocked, this time by a skinny blonde cheerleader with massive pigtails. Creases of anger showed on the other girl's otherwise flawless face as she stared Stacy down, hands on hips.

"You stay away from my Kevvie!" Brittany squeaked furiously.

"What? No! Look, Brit, I'm sorry, but he came on to _me_," Stacy found herself trying to explain, the words running all over each other in the effort to come out of her mouth. "I didn't try anything, I promise! I told him no! You have to believe me!"

Brittany simply crossed her arms and turned her face up and away. "Well I _don't_ believe you, because my Kevvie would never ever do such a thing! We're in a deep committed relationship!"

"What about all those times you guys cheated on each other?"

Stacy nearly dropped her bags to the ground in an attempt to slap both of her hands over her mouth. She couldn't believe that she had just said that, and from the expression on Brittany's face, the cheerleader hadn't expected it either. But try as she might, Stacy couldn't manage to make the words rewind back into her mouth.

"Look, Brittany, I'm sorry!" she babbled. "I didn't mean to say that! I don't know what came over me!"

"No! Nuh-uh!" said Brittany. "It's too late, I hate you forever now, and I never want to see or hear from you ever again, _ever!_ Now if you'll excuse me, _I'm going to my room_."

With that cold proclamation, the blonde girl turned on her heel and walked away. Stunned but unable to think of what else to do, Stacy hitched the straps of her luggage back up onto her shoulders and went back to searching for her own room.

Moments later, she and Brittany stared at each other in horror as they found themselves standing in front of the same door. They both held up their key chains at the same time, checked and double checked both them and each other's, and then groaned in shared misery.

"This isn't _fair!_" Brittany pouted. "I can't share a room with you! I hate you now! It would never work out!"

Stacy leaned against the wall beside the door and covered her face with her hands as a few sobs escaped her chest. She felt almost certain that where Brittany was staying, there had to be two other cheerleaders lying in wait. And with one of them already hating her, it was just a matter of time before all three were.

Ever since she had gotten off the bus, everything had seemed to be moving way too fast for her to assimilate properly, and she finally felt like she was reaching her limit. Even the stress of being the secretary of the Fashion Club and under the constant pressure of Sandi's thumb for most of every day hadn't prepared her for the constant barrage of the field trip from hell that, technically, hadn't even truly begun yet.

Raking her fingernails lightly down her face while trying to simultaneously wipe away some of the tears that had sprung up, Stacy took a deep breath and then handed her key to Brittany, who looked down at it in confusion.

"Go ahead, take it," she said, shaking the gator insistently at the other girl to show her sincerity. When Brittany finally reached out and grabbed the key from her hand, she said, "Just . . . if you would, look for someone to switch rooms with me and make sure they bring their key to me before disappearing in there with you, okay? I'm just . . . I think I'm just gonna sit down for a little while."

Brittany looked at her with a worried expression, but simply nodded and started walking the line of doors, knocking on the next one down. Meanwhile, Stacy wearily dragged herself diagonally across the parking lot until she was around a fourth of the way along the back building of the motel. She turned around, dropped her bags to the asphalt, and sat on one of the cracked concrete wheel stops.

She wasn't sure exactly how long she had been there before she heard the crunching of rocks as Brittany approached, pressed a key into her hand, and left without saying a word.


	2. Stage 2

The Erbie convenience store was much as Daria and Jane had suspected it would be, dingy and slow. A few other students that had braved the trek to the ancient building with its rusty gas pumps milled about, looking for various snack foods with which to waste their night away, but it still wasn't packed with people. The bored cashier behind the counter barely looked up from his magazine as he rang up their purchases, took their money, and handed back the change.

Paper sacks of junk food and soda in hand, the two girls made their way back to the motel while keeping an eye out for any watchful teachers. While they hadn't been expressly forbidden from visiting the store, they still weren't sure if it was okay to do so either, and neither of them had any desire to hear a stern lecture from DeMartino.

Opening the door to their room revealed a sordid scene. Jennifer and Andrea were both passed out on one of the room's two beds, on top of the covers with their day clothes still on. The blonde girl was relatively quiet, but Andrea was intermittently letting out a series of snore-snorts.

The remains of a joint smoldered in an ashtray on the nightstand between the beds, and Andrea had a deathgrip on the neck of an empty whiskey bottle. How they had managed to smuggle either past Li's paranoid personal property searches, neither Jane nor Daria could figure out, but both of them were happy enough that the combination had put the other two girls to sleep.

After setting their bags on the table just inside the door, Jane moved to turn the blaring television down and change the channel while Daria went to grab the ice bucket.

"_They could be anywhere . . . they can look like anyone . . . your teacher, your boss, your best friend, or even **you!** Do genetic copies dream of cloned sheep? Next on **Sick, Sad World!**_"

Satisfied with the selection, Jane muted the TV. Daria placed a plastic ice bag in the bucket and the two of them stepped back out into the night again.

"So, how's that insomnia treatin' ya?" Jane asked once they were outside.

"If I could be sure I'd be learning anything worthwhile, I'd wish I was this alert every day in school," the other girl replied. "It's almost like being _hyper_ awake. Even the dark seems to be vibrating right now."

"That's probably what Quinn feels like all the time."

"What a horrific proposition," Daria said with a frown. "But it would explain why she always wears bright pink shirts. They're the only color that really registers with her jacked up eyes and nervous system."

The rumble of the ice machine hit their ears as they approached its little alcove right at the halfway point of the building. Daria pressed the bucket under the dispenser, causing chunks of ice to gradually and very noisily fill the bag inside. As they waited for it to do its business, Jane looked out across the parking lot and stifled a yawn.

"Keep your shirt on," Daria told her. "We'll get you filled with more caffeine than you can stand soon enough."

Jane laughed softly, then blinked as the parking lot went completely dark. The ice machine rattled to a complete stop, leaving the entire area in utter silence.

"What the-"

Jane had only started her sentence when ice started clattering into the bag again, accompanied by the faint pop of the lot lamps striking back up.

"That was a little weird," Daria said, topping the bucket off and turning around to watch as the lights slowly built to full brightness again.

"Yah," Jane agreed. "Must've been a brownout. We're probably half a state away from the nearest power station."

"Yah," Daria echoed. "Must've been."

The two girls shrugged at each other and headed back to their room.

* * *

"I would like to call this meeting of the Fashion Club to order," Sandi intoned crisply. "Regular president, vice president, and treasurer presiding, and let the record show that joining us today is honorary club member and temporary secretary, Tori Jericho."

"So noted!" Tori chirped as she marked the information down in a notebook.

Sandi nodded approvingly, then turned to the other two girls. "As our first order of business, I would like to propose a vote to extend a formal invitation to the Fashion Club to Tori. I believe she will be an exceptional addition to our ranks, especially if we should so happen to . . . lose a member in the near future. Any seconds?"

Quinn fidgeted with discomfort that had nothing to do with sitting cross-legged on the hard motel bed. As seconds of silence started to drag by, she dreaded the idea that she might actually have to betray Stacy just to keep her own position secure, but Sandi's words seemed to finally click in Tiffany's head, pushing the club's treasurer into action.

"Oooooh, yaaaaaah," Tiffany said, looking up from her compact. "I totally secooooooond . . . "

Sandi glanced ever so briefly at Quinn, then said, "Very good. Motion carried. Before the vote begins, we shall hear debate regarding Tori's eligibility for induction. Thoughts?"

"She wears, like, these totally cute ooooutfiiiiiiiits, and she knows a looooooot about who's popular and who's noooooooot." Speech finished, Tiffany lost all interest in the proceedings and started to prep a bottle of mascara.

Sucking in a big breath, Quinn tried to sort her thoughts into some kind of order. All of the implications of the situation, especially the current meeting, struck her as extremely unfair. Despite all her own power plays concerning the club, she actually liked Stacy and didn't want her to be hurt in any of those maneuvers. Sandi, it seemed, had no such qualms.

She ran her fingers through her red hair and said, "Well, I think Tori would make a great member of the club. She fits all the requirements and stuff for entry. She, like, takes pride in her appearance and interest in the appearance of others. I think she'd make a great addition to the Accessory Committee!"

"Heeeeeeey, then I wouldn't be the only ooooooooone," Tiffany said, a bare hint of cheerfulness breaking through in her voice. "That would be, like, soooooo cooooooool."

Sandi frowned at Quinn and Tori gave her a nasty look over the top of her notebook. "I believe _I_ will be deciding what position Tori may or may not be taking in our organization, Quinn, if you don't mind," Sand said, her tone dangerous.

Quinn quickly retreated. "Oh, of _course_ you will, Sandi!" she wheedled. "I was just making a _suggestion_, that's all. You _did_ ask for our thoughts, right?"

"Well . . . yes," said Sandi, somewhat mollified. "Very well. As Tori is eligible and there are no remarks against her possible entry, we shall hold the vote after a brief recess. During this recess, we shall be giving Tori a makeover in preparation for her imminent entry into the Lawndale High Fashion Club."

Reaching over the side of the bed, she picked up one of the many makeup cases littering the floor. She opened it up, pulled out a tube of lipstick, and removed the cap.

"Ladies, let's get to work!"

Normally, Quinn would have enjoyed any chance to help someone improve their look, but no matter how she tried, she found her heart just wasn't into it this time. And though Tiffany was as oblivious as ever, she could sense that Sandi and Tori could tell. She tried to concentrate solely on brushing out the blonde girl's hair and putting it in a complicated braid, but she could still feel Sandi's eyes flitting toward her from time to time and narrowing in suspicion.

Stacy was out there somewhere, alone without her friends. A year ago, Quinn might not have cared, but she liked to think that she had grown a bit since then, and part of her growth was giving a damn about things like that. She felt trapped between the old her that wanted nothing but the rest of the Fashion Club's approval and the new her that-

The overhead light flickered off, breaking Quinn out of her reverie. All of the girls jumped in surprise, and Quinn was fairly certain that she heard one of them - Tori, she hoped - squeal a bit. Beside that, everything was eerily silent.

The light came back on a few seconds later, and the tension left the air as everyone relaxed.

"I do believe that has proven my idea of a fashion lockdown was an excellent one," Sandi said as she went back to applying rouge on Tori's cheeks. "None of us would want to be caught outside if all the lights went out. No one would be able to see how cute we are."

Quinn ruefully resumed her braiding. "When you're right, you're right, Sandi," she said with a sigh.

* * *

After releasing the lock and opening the door as quietly as possible, Stacy slipped into the dark room. She stood still for a few moments, waiting for her eyes to acclimate, then slowly crossed over to the other side and set her bags in the small alcove next to the bathroom.

In the dim light filtering in around the edges of the curtains, she could make out the sleeping faces of the three other girls. She sort of recognized one of them, but the other two were completely unfamiliar, probably from some lower rung on the popularity ladder and thus beneath Stacy's notice.

She immediately felt bad for thinking of them like that. Besides the fact that it just wasn't nice, she realized that by all appearances, her own position had dropped like a stone and those girls might very well end up being her new best friends by necessity. The unfairness of the system struck her like it often did, and she briefly wondered if now that she was one of its victims, would she have the courage finally to stand up against it?

Probably not, she decided with a sinking feeling. Too many years under Sandi's heel had crushed any rebellious feelings she might have once had. And she did have them, once upon a time. She remembered those days when she had been a little more like Quinn, pushing the boundaries that Sandi set and working to make things a little better on herself and Tiffany.

Quinn.

Stacy could see Sandi and Tori's angles. Sandi had probably long grown tired of Stacy's constant indecision, her toadying, her whining, and her freakouts. And Tori naturally just wanted to be a part of the most popular club in school. Even Tiffany she could understand, being as blind to what was happening to Stacy as she was to everything else that wasn't Tiffany. But Stacy had thought Quinn at least would have stood up for her.

In the end, however, it was just one more disappointment in a day full of disappointments, discomforts, and general unhappiness. And that was just one more day in the cavalcade of horrors that had become Stacy's life. Without bothering to take off anything other than her shoes, she carefully slid under the covers so as not to disturb the other girl, then closed her eyes and prepared to finally drift off to sleep.

Just as she was about to nod off, something caused her to snap her eyes back open and sit up in the bed. She looked around quizzically for several seconds before she realized she couldn't see or hear anything. Fear welled up in her chest as the thought of having gone blind and deaf on top of everything else invaded her mind, but it quickly dispelled as the soft background hum of machinery started up again and the light outside the window began to build back up to its previous vague glow.

Sleep slowly spread its tendrils across her mind again as she laid back down. This time, she hoped, nothing else would interrupt it.

* * *

Anthony twisted the lid off of the medicine bottle, shook one of the tiny pills out into his hand, and held it up to the lamp. The light sat directly behind it, casting both the pill and his hand in deep shadow, like a miniature eclipse.

Blood pressure medication had been a part of his daily routine for around two decades. It was, he knew quite well, the only reason that he was able to function as a teacher without actually popping a blood vessel, as well as one of the small factors keeping him from having another heart attack.

His doctor, however, had decided that it still wasn't quite enough and had switched him to a new type of pill. While DeMartino was happy to have anything new to help him keep the tension in his head from exploding and taking his skull with it, he wasn't too happy with the new medication. No matter when he took it, it put him to sleep, and that worried him a bit.

It had only been a week since he'd switched over, so he hadn't gone back to Dr. Florence yet to complain - though he wanted to, oh how he wanted to - and had kept on taking it in the hopes that the problem would soon right itself. The first few days he had popped them right after breakfast, but after nearly passing out in front of his history class, he quickly switched to taking them in the afternoons after the end of the school day.

As he looked down at the peach-colored circle sitting between his thumb and index finger, he debated on whether or not he should take it before going to bed. He had skipped his afternoon dose in the interests of keeping an eye on the kids during the bus ride, but he was wary of taking something that would put him to sleep when he was already going to be sleeping. The more he thought about it, the more paranoid the idea sounded, but he was afraid that the combination of actual sleep and lowered blood pressure might put him to sleep somewhat more permanently than he desired.

The lamp went dark, blinding DeMartino temporarily. He blinked rapidly and turned his head to look over at the sleeping form of Coach Gibson in the far bed, but before his eyes could adjust the light came back on.

Instead of allowing his brain to settle back into its earlier debate, he popped the pill in his mouth and dry-swallowed it.

* * *

Ms. DeFoe paced back and forth anxiously.

_You're really too sensitive, Claire,_ Li had told her when she had expressed her concerns about the Rowe girl. _These children need to learn how to work both in groups and as individuals. This will be a grand opportunity for growth for . . . what was her name again?_

The rest of the conversation had started to go downhill from there, so Claire had given up and retreated to the room she was sharing with Janet Barch. She hadn't even bothered talking to Janet about the situation. She could already hear the most likely response in her head, telling her that getting shunned would just help Stacy toughen up, so that way she wouldn't fall prey to some _man_ later on in life.

Claire had to admit that the science teacher's pathological philosophy certainly didn't lead to lack of sleep, as the markedly nasal snores coming from the other side of the room attested. But Claire's own ideals wouldn't allow her the same. Stacy had been in obvious distress, and it bothered her that that distress would be allowed to fester overnight.

_You're turning into Timothy,_ Claire tried to warn herself, but it sounded hollow. Despite the unfortunate example O'Neill set, she knew it wasn't wrong to care about the students on a personal level and want to help them not just educationally but emotionally as well.

Finally making up her mind, Claire threw a housecoat over her nightgown, put on a pair of slippers, grabbed her copy of the room key, and stepped out into the rapidly cooling night.

Even with the massive school and rental buses sitting not too far away, the parking lot of the Erbie Motel seemed desolately empty. She began her journey across it with a slight shiver at the loneliness that pervaded the air. The sound of one of the ice machines rumbling in the distance merely added to the effect, the low pitch of its refrigeration unit serving as a poignant dirge.

She had just crossed the lot and stepped onto the street when everything shut down all at once. Starlight and a tiny sliver of moon provided the only illumination, and it seemed like every sound in both the natural and man-made worlds had simply stopped. Claire stood in the middle of the road and strained her ears, but she couldn't detect a trace of anything. No cars on the highway, no children playing music in their rooms, no crickets in the sparse tufts of grass.

Then, just as suddenly, everything came back. The lamps overhead were taking their time turning back on, but the rumble of the ice machine was back and the soft choir of insects and other small animals of the nighttime countryside returned as if they'd never left.

Shaking off the strange feeling left by the temporary blackout, Claire bundled her housecoat around herself and made her way across the street to the office of Nick's Inn.

* * *

As soon as she was sure all of her roommates were asleep, Brittany poked her head out the door and scanned the area with the eyes of a hawk.

A nighthawk.

That could see well at night.

Confident that her movements would be unobserved, she slid out and locked the door behind her. With careful tip-toe steps and a continued alertness, she made her way to the corner of the building. Only a few doors separated her room and that corner, but her insistence on a high level of stealthiness made the journey stretch out over several minutes. She made not a sound, not a whisper, not a-

She reached the corner and nearly screamed when a giant form loomed over her and let out a muffled roar. She got the brief impression of a male figure dressed in coveralls and gloves. His face appeared nearly featureless in the dim light, which glinted for a moment on what appeared to be wide lens goggles.

The scream had caught in Brittany's throat, but the rest of her moved freely, snapping a kick to her attacker's mid-section. As her leg came down, she twisted her torso and pushed forward, ramming her shoulder into his chest and sending him sprawling.

Just as she reached his side and prepared to smash a heel into his head, he put up his hands in surrender and started pushing away from her with his legs. He seemed to be trying to say something, but she couldn't make it out until he reached up and pulled the paintball mask from his face.

"It's just me, babe!" Kevin whimpered pitifully. "Don't hurt me anymore, okay? I'm, like, totally sorry and stuff!"

"Kevvie?" she breathed in surprise, then more angrily, "_Kevvie!_ What in the world are you doing?"

The jock had just enough sense in him to at least look ashamed. He cradled his mask in one arm while pushing himself up with the other and said, "Aw, Brit, it was just a little joke. I mean . . . we're still gonna do it, right?"

Brittany glared hatefully at him, but her expression quickly softened. She couldn't stay mad at her Kevvie for long.

"Well of _course_ we are!" she squeaked as she stepped forward and helped him back up. She then put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him lightly against the wall. "In fact," she said, her voice dropping an octave, "why don't you leave the mask . . . _on_."

A wide grin broke out across Kevin's face just before it was covered by the paintball rig. The tint on the goggles made it difficult to see what was going on, but as Brittany slowly unzipped the front of his coveralls and reached in to caress his chest, he realized that sight wasn't the sense he really needed to be paying attention to anyway.

Brittany's lips brushed against his neck, right under the jawline of the mask. She moved down his collarbone as she pushed her hand further back, stroking her way across his ribs. He moaned into the mask's filter and congratulated himself on the idea of not wearing anything under his coveralls as she pushed the front open wider and laid butterfly kisses all along his pecs and abs.

Gradually, torturously, she moved further and further down, pulling the zipper along with her. When she finally reached her ultimate destination, Kevin pushed back hard against the side of the building and shoved his hips forward with a grunt of ecstasy.

_Mmm,_ he thought, _ec . . . Stacy . . . _

Closed off in the miniature sensory deprivation chamber of the mask, Kevin found it easy to imagine Stacy Rowe was the one clinging to his pelvis, massaging his butt as her mouth worked all sorts of wonders on other parts of his anatomy. He kind of wished it _was_ her, as he liked some variety from time to time, but the way things were going down . . . well, he couldn't really complain.

"What was that?"

Complaints started flooding into Kevin's head the second he felt cool air hit his nethers and heard Brittany's whispered question. The idea of getting caught pushed all of those complaints to the side, however, so he quickly pushed the mask up and started asking "What was what?" but stopped when it became immediately apparent.

The area between the buildings they were in had been fairly dark to start off with, but with the disappearance of all the lights in the parking lots of the motel on one side and the diner on the other, everything had gone almost pitch black. An unnatural silence permeated the air, sending a chill down Kevin's spine.

Then, it was over. The lights clicked back on and the regular sounds of the night slipped back into place, dispelling the hold it had seemed to place over the two teenagers.

"Uh, babe?" Kevin said, looking down at his girlfriend. "I'm, uh, gettin' a little cold here, if you know what I mean."

Brittany looked up at him and blinked in confusion, then, "Oh! Right! Sorry, babe!"

Sliding the mask down, Kevin was back in his own personal heaven again. Warmth suffused his lower body and spread, radiating through his skin and muscles, relaxing him. He laid a hand on the side of Brittany's neck and rubbed his fingers gently upward until they pressed through the hair on the back of her head.

He felt like he was floating downward, serene, down into a comfort he'd never known before. Something was calling him, beckoning him into that comfort, slowly guiding him deeper and deeper until before he realized it, he had closed his eyes and fallen asleep.

Brittany's skin thrilled as Kevin's other hand came up to stroke across her cheek. Usually he just grabbed onto her and held her still, and she didn't really like that, but this time he was moving with a care he only rarely showed. Both hands moved up and down, kneading her along the neck and shoulders as they went along.

Then, suddenly, he _did_ grab her, pressing his palms into either side of her head. She grunted in surprise and pulled back, but he stayed on her, pushing against her temples with gradually increasing pressure.

"Kevvie, stop, go back to what you were doing before," she said, then cried out. "Ow! You're starting to hurt me, babe! What are you doing?"

She looked up at him, but only the blank mask looked back. She called out his name a few more times, but there was no answer as he pressed in harder and harder.

"Darnit, babe, that's _enough!_" she cried out, then slapped his crotch to get his attention. When she still got no reaction and with the ache in her head starting to become actual sharp pain, she pulled back and punched him square in the balls.

He didn't even flinch.

"_Kevvie, let go! Let **go!**_" Brittany screamed. She punched him everywhere she could reach. She clawed at his hands, drawing blood. She tried shifting her legs to kick him in the shins, but she couldn't move back far enough to get into a good position. His hands held her close like a slowly closing vise.

She sobbed. She pleaded with him. She screamed for help. She simply screamed.

He leaned over her and pressed even harder.

Consciousness had just begun fading when she heard the first sickening crunch of her own skull fracturing.

When the girl finally stopped moving, he released her. Her misshapen head hit the ground and slowly dripped blood to pool in the dirt. He looked down at the corpse, twisting his head to view it at different angles, but betrayed no sign of any kind of emotion.

Once certain that she wasn't going to be getting up again anytime soon, he zipped up his coveralls and stalked off into the parking lot of Nick's Inn.

* * *

Sleep eluded Stacy once more as she was brought fully awake by the sound of a girl screaming. At first she thought it had just been part of a half-dream that had been forming as she had been drifting off, but the scream came again with the full clarity of reality behind it. It was somewhere outside and somewhat distant, but unmistakable.

None of the other girls in the room stirred at the noise, so Stacy quietly slipped out of bed and padded over to the window in her stocking feet. Once there, she slowly parted the curtains and peered out into the night to see nothing but the empty parking lot.

The screams continued and Stacy was about to dismiss them as the sounds of a TV in one of the other rooms turned up too loud when she suddenly recognized the squeaky voice strained by fear and pain as Brittany's. Her skin froze at the realization.

She felt the urgent need to run out and see if the other girl needed any help, but she found that she couldn't move. At first she panicked at the thought that it was a reaction to Brittany's unfair attitude earlier, but as she pushed that thought from her head, she found that the only movement she was capable of was a subtle trembling.

She was afraid.

The screaming became more anguished as Stacy cursed herself for her inaction. She pushed and pulled at her own body until she finally lifted her arm and flipped the light switch sitting next to the door. Still staring out the window, she waited for the angry cries of the other girls to hit her ears. If nothing else, she hoped it would partially drown out those horrible shrieks of terror.

The muscles in her neck creaked with tension as she tore her gaze from the parking lot and looked behind her to find that the three girls were still sound asleep, faces peaceful in their repose.

"Hey," she tried to say, her voice barely coming to a whisper. "_Hey,_" she managed, more insistently. Then finally, "_Wake up!_"

Soft snores were all she got in return. Strangely emboldened by this yet frightened at the same time, She moved away from the window and stood over the nearest bed. With as much force as she could muster, she pulled her hands back and clapped loudly over the pretty brunette and that side. Getting no response, she moved to the blonde girl on the other side and actually grabbed her shoulder to shake her. She rolled over and completely ignored Stacy's efforts.

"_Wake up wake up wake up! Come on! HEEEEEELP!_"

Even jumping on her own side of the other bed right next to the third girl and shouting at the top of her lungs elicited little more than a cough-snort that shifted right back into the gentle, even breaths of sleep.

Stacy stepped down from the bed and started plotting her next move, then stopped and stared into the distance as she listened to the complete silence around her. After a few seconds of hearing nothing, she scrambled back to the window and placed her ear directly against the glass. Still nothing. The screams had stopped.

She turned her head and looked out the window, but with the light behind her it was difficult to make anything out. She reached over and flipped the switch back off, then gasped as she saw a man walking across the parking lot a few yards away. She could just barely make out the brown, black, and green splotches of his camouflage coveralls in the blue-white lighting of the lot lamps, but she could clearly see his heavy boots and thick work gloves. His face, however, appeared almost featureless-

Stacy snapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream as the man stopped in his tracks and turned that almost flat, featureless face her direction. He seemed to bore into her with eyes shaped like wide-lensed goggles sitting under an oddly sloping forehead and a head of black hair.

Standing statue still, Stacy waited, frozen with fear that the man with the goggle eyes could see her and would start walking her direction. She heard a thin whine start to escape from her throat, and to stop it she simply stopped breathing entirely. An eternity of seconds creeped by agonizingly slow as the two of them seemed to study each other in complete detail, staring hard enough to bore holes.

Stacy fought the urge to breathe an explosive sigh of relief as the man suddenly turned and continued on his way. Tears began to well up in her eyes, and her body shook with unreleased sobs.

Brittany was dead. Stacy didn't have to see the corpse to know it had to be true. And somehow she knew it was her fault. She had tried to wake up the others, but it had probably been too late by that point even if they had gotten up. She told herself that if she had only run out when she had first heard the screams, banging on every door along the way and making as much noise as possible, she might have been able to scare off the cheerleader's attacker, if not gather a huge group of people to help her fight him off. Instead she had stood frozen, unable to help anyone or do anything of real consequence.

And she cried in shame at her cowardice.

* * *

"Hello?"

Claire held her robe close around herself as she poked her head into the motel office. The lights were on and she could hear a small TV belting out the sounds of some late night adventure show, but she couldn't immediately see anyone in the small room. Thinking the clerk might have stepped off into a back room somewhere, they stepped into the office and rang the small bell sitting on the counter.

No answer, no shuffling of feet or the particular sound of doors being opened and closed. She could see the black and white TV set sitting on a desk behind the counter, but the only sign that anyone had been watching it at any point was an empty swivel chair sitting nearby.

"Is there anyone here?"

Calling out and ringing the bell again brought the same results as before, and though Claire thought of herself as a very patient woman, something about the situation was starting to put her nerves on edge. She couldn't quite put her finger on what that something was, but it was enough to make her walk around the counter and push open the single door sitting on the other side without fully considering her actions.

A short, dark hallway sat on the other side, lit only by a dim bulb hanging from an old fashioned ceramic socket. Claire stepped past the threshold and carefully opened the first door on her left. The sharp chemical smell of industrial cleaning solvent hit her nose as she looked into a small, dingy housekeeping closet.

She was just about to open the door on her right when a sound from the other side caught her attention. Placing her head next to the door's faux wood paneling, she could make out an irregular grinding noise. At first she thought it was some kind of machine, but she quickly recognized it at organic in nature and opened the door to step inside.

The room beyond was a small lounge of sorts, with a scratched up table sitting in one corner and a small cot in the other. A coffee machine and various minor condiments and plastic eating utensils littered the table, while on the cot sat the slumbering figure of the Nick's Inn clerk. His ragged, uneven snoring filled the small space, as did the acrid tinge of cigarette smoke.

Though the smoke came from a cigarette that was still lit, it appeared that the clerk hadn't taken a drag from it in quite some time. It was nearly burnt down to the filter, but half of the tobacco still hung on in the form of ash. Claire took a moment to thank goodness that the clerk had fallen asleep with the cigarette sitting in one of the crooks of an ashtray on the floor instead of in his hand over flammable clothing or cot material, then grew somewhat miffed that the man would fall asleep on duty at all.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, pressing his shoulder gently. "Excuse me."

The man's snoring became even more irregular for a moment, then settled back into a lower register. His lips smacked underneath the ball cap that he had pulled over his eyes, but that was the last reaction she could get out of him, no matter what she tried.

Irritation turned to worry as Claire continued to try and wake him. She stopped and stared down at him, her head suddenly filled with thoughts that he might have some sort of medical condition, like narcolepsy, and that she should possibly call an ambulance for him.

Giving him one more shake to be sure he wasn't going to suddenly come out of it, she left the room and stepped back into the office to jump in surprise when she saw a man wearing camo coveralls standing at the door.

"Oh, goodness," she said, collecting herself. "I'm sorry, you startled me. If you're here to see the clerk, he's sleeping in the back room and I can't seem to wake him up. I'm afraid that he . . . I'm sorry again, but . . . why are you wearing a mask?"

Instead of answering, the man simply stared at her for a second before swiftly jumping over the counter and leaping onto Claire. He pushed her back against the office desk and clamped his hands around her neck, cutting off her windpipe before she could call for help or even cough once as he choked her. Her back began to ache as he pressed her down with his own body, jamming the bones in her spine against the edge of the desk and bending her backwards until she was nearly laying down on the flat surface.

She grabbed onto the man's wrists and pulled on them, but it was like trying to bend steel bars for all the good she did, and she could feel deep scratches in the skin along the area between his gloves and coverall sleeves. Looking over, she could see a small bit of blood ooze from those wounds onto her hands, realized how fresh they were, and wondered if the other person he had attacked had managed to get away.

As the techno beat of the adventure show on the TV beat in time with the blood trying to pump furiously through her head and darkness started to fold its way into her vision, she wondered if _she_ would manage to get away.

He grinded against her as he squeezed her neck tighter and tighter. Some small part of her felt disgusted at the movement, but another part recognized that there was nothing sexual about it. It only served to smash her further into the desk, as if the man wanted to crush every part of her, not just her throat. She found that her own struggles to push him back with her own body were becoming more and more feeble as weakness slowly suffused her from lack of oxygen.

She looked up into the goggles that formed part of the mask and tried to see past the amber tint of the plastic with her fading vision. She couldn't be certain if what she saw was real or hallucination, but it almost seemed as if the eyes on the other side were closed, as if he wasn't even looking back at her as he killed her.

Just as she was about to give up and accept her fate, the pressure came away from her throat as the man staggered back from her and turned to swipe at something behind him. As she lay gasping and choking for air, she could just barely make out several inches of what looked like a nail file sticking out of his back just above his right shoulder blade.

Various items that had been sitting on the counter flew through the air around the man's form, some of them hitting him, more of them glancing off of him, and most sailing straight past to land on and around the desk. Through it all, the man didn't make a noise, merely trying to ward off the assault before running to one of the office windows and jumping through it. Claire heard the crunching of gravel and glass as the man made his escape.

As she tried her best to recover as quickly as possible, Claire felt small hands on her back and shoulders and heard a female voice echo in her ears as if from a great distance. She wasn't sure how long she had been wheezing and coughing before she could finally look up to see Stacy standing over her, looking concerned.

"_Huh-who . . . ?_" the teacher managed before going into another coughing fit.

Stacy looked at her, tear stains and terror wrecking her usual pretty features. "The Goggle Eyes Man," she said, voice trembling. "He followed me here."

"_Wha . . . ?_"

"I saw him in the restroom mirror back at school, just before we left," Stacy told her. "I didn't say anything because I thought it was just my imagination or something, but that was him! He's here! And he killed Brittany, and I didn't try to stop him, I just listened to her-"

"_Britt-_" Claire cleared her throat again. Though her voice was still scratchy, she seemed to be regaining some control over it. "Brittany? Are you sure?"

Stacy nodded vehemently as tears began to form in her eyes again. Claire made a sharp intake of air and put her hand to her mouth in horror. She might have written off the young girl's statements as a cry for attention combined with hysteria brought on by stress, but she could already feel the bruises starting to form around her neck in the shape of her attacker's hands. It was all the evidence she needed to know that Stacy might very well be telling the truth.

"Okay," she rasped. "Okay. We need to call the police and wake everyone up. I'll-"

She stopped short when Stacy gripped her arm. "I tried to wake up the other girls in my room," Stacy said, shaking her head. "They wouldn't. I was knocking on doors all the way down here, and no one answered. I . . . I don't think they _can_ wake up!"

Claire looked over at the hallway door and felt her heart begin to sink. "We can still try the police," she said as she picked up the phone sitting under the front counter. With shaking fingers, she carefully pressed the buttons for 911 and put the receiver to her ear.

At first she thought she was hearing nothing at all. There was no dial tone, no ringing, and no sound coming from the other side of the line. Thinking that the phone was completely dead, she was just about to put it back in its cradle when she noticed the soft hiss coming from the speaker, denoting an open line.

"Hello?"

If anyone heard her, they betrayed no sign. No answer in kind, no quickened breathing, no soft chuckles of a prankster. Pure silence.

The hiss seemed to reach out of the phone to crawl into Claire's ear, trying to tunnel its way down into her brain. With a grunt of disgust, she tore the tore the receiver away and held it in front of herself as if it were a live thing, squirming between her fingers.

Stacy had been nervously staring out the windows, watching out for any sign that the Goggle Eyes Man would return, but upon hearing Claire's movement, she turned to look at the older woman with a worried expression. For Stacy's sake if not her own, Claire smiled back and tried to appear as if nothing was wrong. When the girl turned back to her vigil, the teacher pressed down on the phone's disconnect and toggled it a few times.

The open line remained, still menacing somehow without making a sound. She didn't bother dialing or saying anything. She simply listened to the silence until she couldn't stand it any more. Slamming the phone back into its cradle a little harder than she'd meant to, Claire took Stacy by the shoulder and started to guide her back out into the parking lot.

"The phone is out." She purposefully refrained from using the word _dead_. "We should go find the other teachers. Do you know which room they're staying in over here?"

When Stacy shook her head, Claire chewed on her bottom lip for a moment and made a decision. It was something of a risky move, but it had to be done. "Alright," she said. "We'll have to go over to the other motel, then. Keep an eye out for anything, and if you see the masked man, just stay behind me. Okay?"

Nodding her pig-tailed head in understanding, Stacy pressed in close to Claire's side as they moved to cross the street. The older woman took note that whatever bravado Stacy might have shown in saving her before had completely disappeared. If what the girl had said was true and Brittany had been killed because she hadn't tried to defend the cheerleader, then the act of heroism had probably been fueled entirely by guilt, and unfortunately it didn't seem to be enough to get her through a second encounter.

They looked both ways before stepping out onto the road, though it was mostly a pointless gesture. It was just as devoid of traffic as it had been since they'd arrived that evening, and with the strange events that were transpiring around them, it seemed that there was a chance it might remain empty until the police finally came through the next morning to pick up the cold bodies of the Lawndale High student body and faculty.

Claire shoved the morbid thought out of her head just before she saw a hulking shadowy shape ahead of them, backlit by the sodium lamps of the Erbie Motel lot. She drew Stacy to a stop and the two of them tried to discern the identity of the figure before proceeding.

It was male, certainly, and seemed to be the same general build and height as the Goggle Eyes Man, but it was difficult to be sure. Stacy didn't seem to share Claire's doubts, however, as she clawed and twisted her fingers deep into the teacher's thick housecoat and let out a small whine.

The man apparently heard the noise and turned his head, revealing a familiar face to the light.

"_Kevin!_"

The strain of shouting caused Claire to descend into another spasm of choking coughs. Kevin ran toward them, but as he moved away from the backlighting, they could see the the camo coveralls and gloves that he was wearing. Stacy screamed and started trying to drag Claire away, causing Kevin to pull up short and hold his hands up.

"Whoa, hey!" he called out. "Ms. DeFoe . . . and, uh, Stacy! It's just me, the QB!"

Claire gently pushed Stacy around so that she was standing between the girl and the football player. "Yes, Kevin," she said sternly. "We can see that."

"Hey, what's wrong with your voice? Do you, like, got a cold or something?" Kevin asked, then looked around. "And . . . hey, how did I get over here?"

Claire called his name, getting his attention back on her. "Kevin," she said, "what's the last thing you remember?"

"Ummmmm . . . oh! Me and Brit were just . . . uh, enjoying a little moonlight stroll! And it was a _very nice_ 'moonlight stroll', if you know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows at the women for a moment before realizing what he'd said. "Uh, not that you would!" he quickly amended. "I mean, _I_ don't even know what I meant! What did I mean? I dunno! No clue here!"

A feeling of surreality started to wash over Claire. "Kevin, where _is_ Brittany?"

He looked around himself with an expression of guileless confusion. "Like, I dunno! She was just with me a second ago. Or . . . was _I_ just with _her_ a second ago? And why is my shoulder all hurty?"

Claire gasped when he twisted around to look at his own back. She could see Stacy's nail file sticking out just below his shoulder, a small stain of blood soaking through the fabric surrounding it. Immediately putting aside the danger he might still pose, she moved forward only to be pulled back by Stacy.

"No no no, don't," the girl pleaded, hanging onto Claire's sleeve. "He's the Goggle Eyes Man. He'll hurt you again."

"Honey, I think he's just Kevin now," Claire tried to reason with her. "And Kevin's hurt. We need to get him fixed up and talk to him some more if we're going to figure out what's goin on here, okay?"

Stacy looked unconvinced, but she let go of the teacher's coat and meekly followed along as they approached the wounded boy.

"No, Kevin, don't touch it," Claire said, pushing his hand away from the file. "If you take it out, you'll just bleed more. We'll take you to find some bandages first, and then we'll go look for Brittany together. Okay?"

Kevin beamed brightly at her. "Yah, that sounds like a great idea!" he said. "Y'know, for a teacher, you're pretty smart!"

Taking the backhanded comment in stride, she led the two teenagers toward the Erbie Motel office. She felt fairly certain that the scene there would be much like it had been over at Nick's, but there was still the good chance that they'd find first aid kit somewhere within.

_And if we're lucky,_ she thought, _if we're very very lucky, we'll find that the phone works, the clerk is awake, that Brittany is fine, and that all of this has just been a big misunderstanding._

"Hey," Kevin said as they walked up to the office door, "has anybody seen my mask?"

* * *

The words on the page swam in Anthony's vision as he stared dully at the book in his hands. He felt his head start to nod forward, and he immediately jerked it back upright and shook it to clear away the fuzz that was settling over his mind. His jaw fairly cracked from the massive yawn he involuntarily let out.

Trying to stay up after taking his medicine wasn't working out as well as he'd planned.

That neurotic worry that he'd sleep literally like the dead still gnawed at his gut, but the longer he stayed awake, the more he came to realize that the worry simply wasn't enough. He was going to sleep whether he wanted to or not, and he could either do it uncomfortably in a motel chair or somewhat less uncomfortably in a motel bed.

After marking his place and setting his book aside, he grabbed a plastic cup of water from the sink and set it on the nightstand next to his bed. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, then looked around the room one last time to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything.

He grunted softly as he remembered to slip the paintball mask on before turning off the light, sliding into bed, and swiftly falling into a deep, dark sleep. 


	3. Stage 3

"_Ow_, Ms. D!" Kevin whined as he snatched his arm back. "That totally hurts!"

Claire sighed, grabbed hold of his hand, and wrenched his forearm back over to her. While the wound left by Stacy's nail file hadn't really been very serious, the deep gouges taken out of his arms just above the wrist were much nastier. They had already washed the lacerations out in the small bathroom behind the office, but Claire insisted on treating them with iodine from the first aid kid they'd found under the front counter.

Despite being the Lawndale Lion's star quarterback and supposedly a grown boy, Kevin proved to be quite reticent about undergoing any amount of pain, even pain that was in the service of helping him heal properly. Claire figured the only thing that kept him from running out the door to get away was Stacy. The brunette obviously still didn't trust Kevin, and she stood near the door, glaring at him with her arms crossed and her nail file gripped tightly in one hand.

Claire had her own reservations, but she simply couldn't rationally place the whinging football player sitting in front of her in the same category as the man who had tried to choke her just a short time before. She wasn't the superstitious sort by any means, but she felt that there was something more to what was going on. The clerk perpetually sleeping with his boots propped up just a few feet away helped fuel that suspicion, as did the office phone, which was just as inexplicably unusable as the one at Nick's.

Or at least that was what Stacy had told her. Claire hadn't been able to bring herself to pick up the phone again.

But if Kevin really wasn't responsible for what he had done, if he really didn't remember doing the things he did, then what was going on? Eschewing the more unlikely possibilities, she was left with very few options. But could she do away with those possibilities considering the other strange things that were happening around her? He could have a sudden onset of multiple personality disorder, or he could have been possessed by a ghost that could control phone lines and make people stay asleep.

She pushed the questions out of her mind as she set the iodine aside and started bandaging Kevin's wrists. There simply wasn't enough information to go on, so idle speculation wasn't going to get her or her two charges anywhere.

"Okay, I'm almost done here," she said out loud. "In just a minute, we're going to go to each door in the motel and knock. The three of us are awake, so maybe there are others. Then . . . we start searching for Brittany."

"I _know_ where she is," said Stacy. Her voice wavered, but she was adamant. "She's dead, and he killed her!"

Kevin's eyes grew wide. "I _what?_ No! No way, Ms. D! We were just . . . walking, right? And all of a sudden she was gone and I was on the other side of the lot! Ya gotta believe me!"

Claire gave Stacy a wounded look, then turned to Kevin and put her hands on his shoulders. "It's okay, Kevin, it's okay," she said reassuringly. "I believe you, but . . . the evidence that she's still alive . . . well, it isn't good, Kevin. You have to accept the idea that she might be-"

"I can't believe I'm hearing this!" he shouted, swatting her hands away. "We're gonna find her, and she's gonna be just fine! You guys'll see! My babe ain't dead, no way!"

"Yes, she _is!_" Stacy shouted, unable to contain herself. She looked dangerously close to brandishing her file as she stepped forward and stamped her foot. "The Goggle Eye-"

An angry scream flitted into the office from a short distance away.

"Oh my God . . . " Claire breathed, putting her hand up to her mouth.

Stacy suddenly looked confused. Her eyes darted from Kevin to the office door, her face gradually collapsing into fear and guilt. A second scream tore through the night, this one of pain. Without a second thought, Stacy slammed the door open, ran out, and took a hard left turn toward the closest of the rooms.

Kevin stared after her for a few seconds before jumping up and running after. "Come on, Ms. D!" he called back over his shoulder. "It might be Brit!"

Claire watched them go, horrified and confused. If Kevin had really been her attacker, as all the evidence pointed to, then why would someone else be screaming? _Because they can't wake anyone else up,_ she told herself, but the words rang hollow in her own mind.

_Because there's two attackers,_ she corrected herself, then quickly moved to follow the students.

* * *

The knock at the door was slow with precisely even spaces between each rap, as if it were being performed by a sluggish robot. Daria and Jane looked at each other, eyebrows quirked.

"I don't remember ordering any pizza," Jane said.

"I don't remember ordering any anything," Daria returned.

"So who's at the door?"

The knock came again, slow and thudding.

"It's probably some practical joker in a mask, going from room to room to get his jollies by scaring poor, innocent girls such as ourselves," said Daria. She then nodded her head at the still-sleeping Andrea and Jennifer, sarcastically adding, "And them."

"Welp, it doesn't look like _they're_ gonna answer it," Jane said as a third set of heavy raps sounded out. She and Daria sat staring at each other for a few moments before Jane shrugged. "What? It doesn't look like _I'm_ gonna answer it, either."

Rolling her eyes while rolling off the bed, Daria padded over to the window and peeked out around the curtains. She smirked wryly. "A man in a mask," she said, moving to the door and opening it. "What did I tell y-"

The door was only open a few inches when the man on the other side shoved it open all the way and stepped inside. Daria stumbled back a few steps, then felt her head snap back as she fell to the ground. It took several seconds for her brain to fully assimilate that she had been hit square in the face by the man's fist.

Jane sat in shock, staring at the man as he stood over Daria. He was indeed wearing a mask, which she recognized as being the paintball mask Brittany had been swatting Kevin with on the bus. But for some reason, it wasn't Kevin or Brittany who was wearing it, but Mr. DeMartino. And even weirder, the only things he was wearing besides the mask were blue and white striped boxer shorts and a white tank top.

All of these observations faded away as it registered with Jane that someone had punched Daria.

Jane was not by nature a violent person. She could make a lot of noise when she wanted to, but like the rest of her family - except her sister Penny, perhaps - she generally found physically attacking someone to seem like too much trouble. The one time she had actually tried to beat up someone, it had been generally ineffectual and poorly executed. Violence just wasn't really a part of who she was.

But someone had just punched Daria.

With a building scream of rage, she launched herself off the bed, jumped over Daria, and plowed into DeMartino's belly with her sharp shoulder. She wasn't exactly certain what she had expected the attack to do, considering DeMartino outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, but it seemed that she had gathered enough speed to hit him hard and with enough surprise to send him staggering back through the door.

She followed him out and started pummeling him with her small fists, but all of the momentum of her attack had been lost. His balance regained, he simply stared down at her as she bopped the bottoms of her fists against his chest over and over again.

The weak barrage ended as he grabbed her wrists in his hands and pulled them outward. Jane gasped in surprise at the strength evident in his arms and fingers. Though he was moving slowly, it felt obvious that he could have snapped them out and torn her in two like a wishbone if he'd wanted.

And it seemed that that was exactly what he intended, though more slowly and painfully. His arms were a good bit longer than hers, and when she reached the limit of how far she could stretch out, he kept on pulling. Doing this put her body unappealingly close to his, and her nose was filled with DeMartino's heavy musk of cigarettes, whiskey, and cheap cologne.

She kicked at his shins and cursed at herself for having taken off her heavy boots. He took as little notice of her attack as he had before and continued to stretch her out until her joints started to creak. Pain arced its way through her body, forcing a scream of anguish from her lungs.

* * *

Once again, Stacy found herself running headlong toward what was certainly some sort of peril. Before, it had been the thought that the Goggle Eyes Man might hurt someone else when she could have done something about it that had driven her forward. But they had caught him. She and Ms. DeFoe had found Kevin and were keeping a close eye on him.

Hearing the piercing shriek had jumbled those confident thoughts. They continued to clump and scatter in her head as she ran, making an incoherent mess out of an already strange situation. She couldn't get a handle on it . . . and that, she realized as she skidded to a halt and gawked at the sight in front of her, was why she had run out of the office. She had needed to see what was going on, to try and get a handle on things.

Seeing Mr. DeMartino trying to tear Jane in half while wearing nothing but his nightclothes and a paintball mask didn't do anything to help with that.

"Hey! Let her go!" Kevin yelled as he rushed past Stacy, one arm out palm first and the other curled at his side as if he were carrying an invisible football.

The ball of Kevin's hand caught Mr. DeMartino just under his armpit, snapping him sideways. Jane was carried along with him, still screaming, but as he stumbled he let off some of the tension he was putting on her. Kevin tried to continue his forward push, but the teacher had easily regained his balance and dug his feet in, holding his ground. He then dropped the girl and twisted around so that the quarterback's hand slid to the side.

Without DeMartino propping him up anymore, Kevin staggered forward only to be caught up by the masked man's steel grip on his throat. With unnerving ease, the older man lifted Kevin by his throat and began to squeeze.

Claire came up at that point and gasped at the scene. "Anthony!" she called out "_Anthony!_ What are you _doing?_"

If he heard her, he didn't give any indication. Kevin started to gurgle as his windpipe was inevitably sealed shut. The three women watched on in horror.

"I don't understand," Stacy was mumbling to herself, "I don't understand I don't understand . . . Kevin was the killer but now he's being killed by the killer . . . "

"_Help!_" Claire began to yell, though she knew it to almost certainly be futile. Everyone else would be asleep, no one could wake up, if anyone else was going to come help they would have done so when Jane had screamed, but still she yelled at the top of her voice, "_HEEEELP!_"

Stacy suddenly let out a scream of her own, then barreled forward shouting "No no no no NO!" and holding her nail file out.

DeMartino turned and reached out with his free hand to pluck the file from her hands as if it were nothing. She ran into him, but her slight body held neither the momentum of Kevin nor the element of surprise like Jane. She bounced off of him and hit the ground hard on her backside.

Emboldened by Stacy's move, despite its futility, Claire moved in and reached up to tug on the fingers that remained stubbornly tight around Kevin's throat. Jane had picked herself up and cradled her aching shoulders while pushing up against his back, trying to topple him over. He ignored both of them as he continued his grisly work.

Stacy snapped back up off the ground, grabbed DeMartino's shoulder, and pulled herself up his body with a strength born of panic. Wrapping one of her arms around his to keep herself in place, she reached over, snagged the underside of the paintball mask, and tore it from his face.

All of the strength seemed to leave Anthony's body, and he dropped to the ground like a puppet that had lost its strings. Kevin fell prone next to him, neither of them moving.

"What . . . the hell . . . just happened?" Jane demanded, sounding close to hyperventilation.

Before anyone could answer her, DeMartino's eyes fluttered open and he sat up straight to look around as if he'd never seen the people around him or the parking lot before in his life. Though comprehension seemed to continue eluding him, the confusion in his eyes finally cleared and he looked over at Claire.

"AH," he said, "Ms. DeFOE! Perhaps you can tell me just WHAT in the name of _Jiminy H. Christmas_ is GOING ON HERE?"

"Anthony, you-" Claire started, but then gasped and dropped down next to the young man at her feet. "Kevin! Oh my God, Kevin!"

"Daria!" Jane said, remembering that she had her own person to check on. As she ran back to her motel room, Claire turned Kevin over and started to check him as a sniffling Stacy and perplexed Anthony looked on. She held her hand over his mouth and nose, felt the inside of his wrist and sides of his neck, and finally laid her ear against his chest. She stayed in that position for a long time before slowly sitting up and putting her hand to her mouth.

"He's dead," she informed them quietly.

DeMartino opened and shut his mouth several times as his gaze switched back and forth between Kevin's body and Claire's stricken face. Finally, he ground his teeth together, stood up, and scrambled back a few steps.

"Ms. DeFoe, Miss Rowe," he said authoritatively, "I beLIEVE it is time to EXPLAIN just what is going _ON AROUND HERE!_"

Claire held her hands out wide and shook them in frustration. "I don't know if we _can_ explain it, Anthony!"

"Hey, guys!" Jane called out from her door. "Get over here, quick!"

Stacy and the two teachers took one last look at the corpse sitting on the asphalt, then silently made their way over to Jane. Without trying to let DeMartino notice, Stacy picked up the nail file that he had dropped and stayed behind him the whole way. The situation was more complicated than she had previously thought, it seemed, and she resolved to herself that she was going to be all the more careful to compensate.

Claire immediately rushed to Daria's side when they got into the room. The girl was sitting in one of the motel chairs and holding a clear bag of ice against one of her eyes. She jerked when she looked up and saw DeMartino, but Claire shushed her and kept her from jumping up and running away.

"He's not going to hurt you," she reassured the girl in a whisper. "We're still trying to figure out what happened, but for now, he's just Anthony DeMartino again. But more importantly, are you okay?"

Daria settled back, glancing at the history teacher warily. "Except for the eggplant I'm going to be growing out of my face tomorrow morning, yes, I'm fine," Daria tried to say dryly, but the tension in her voice undercut her intent. She pointed over at the nearest bed and said more seriously, "But they aren't. They won't wake up."

"Nobody will," Stacy whimpered. "The girls in my room wouldn't wake up."

"The men in the offices wouldn't either," Claire informed them.

DeMartino scoffed. "Don't be RIDICulous, ladies! You can't POSS-"

"_Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!_" Jane yelled into Jennifer's ear as she violently shook the girl up and down. "_This is your wake up call, Miss Burns! You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!_"

She stopped, stood back, and held her hands up and away, but the only reaction she got was Jennifer lightly smacking her lips and then turning over. Andrea gave a quick jag of irregular snoring before doing the same on the other side of the bed.

"It's a JOKE of some kind. You girls think that it's FUNNY moving a teacher _out into the parking lot_ and then-"

Claire stood up and stamped her foot. "Dammit, Anthony, _you're the one who killed Kevin!_" she shouted in his face.

He boggled back at her, slack-jawed. "No," he said, "that's not POSSIBLE! I was in BED!"

"Kevin killed Brittany and tried to kill Ms. DeFoe," Stacy whispered to herself as much as to anyone else in the room. She pointed at DeMartino and continued thoughtfully, "Then you tried to kill Jane and did kill Kevin. But . . . but it wasn't you. It was the Goggle Eyes Man. He's taking people over somehow, making them do things."

Everyone stared at her, transfixed. When she noticed everyone was looking at her, she shrunk down into herself and mumbled, "Sorry . . . "

"You have no reason to be sorry," Claire said, putting a comforting hand on the young girl's shoulder. "_I'm_ the one who should be sorry. I didn't believe you about this goggle man before, but . . . I think you might be right. Anthony," she said, turning to the other teach, "I really think she may be right. I know it's a lot to take in, but there _is_ something going on around here. Something strange, and dangerous, and I think it's using _us_ to make all of this happen. It's killed one of our students, may have killed another, and it's put people into some kind of unending sleep."

Anthony swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing hard in his throat. "Okay," he said calmly. "Let's just say _that I believe all of this_ for the moment. What are we supposed to DO about some supernatural KILLER that can take us over _at any time?_"

"There may be other people still awake, like us," Daria said, gingerly pulling the ice pack away from her eye and slipping her glasses back on. "We should get everyone together and . . . _Quinn!_" she suddenly exclaimed as she jumped from her chair. "I have to-"

She moved hastily toward the door, but Claire caught her. "Wait, Daria, wait! We'll go check on Quinn first if you want, but remember what you just said yourself. We'll all go together, alright?"

Panic raced across Daria's features for a few moments, but cool rationality gradually found its way back into place. Her eyes were still a bit twitchy, but she nodded her acquiescence. "Right," she said. "If someone really is body jumping, we need to know how they're doing it, so we need to watch each other."

"Maybe that mask has something to do with it?" Jane suggested. "I mean, as soon as Stacy pulled it off Mr. D, it was like she hit a light switch."

"Where is the mask, Stacy?" asked Claire.

Stacy held out one of her hands, then started when she saw that it was empty. "It's gone!" she said, surprised. "It was right here just a second ago! I _swear_ it!"

"Wait . . . WHAT mask?" DeMartino asked, his voice strained as sweat began to pop out on his forehead.

Jane gave him a quick rundown of what she had seen of Kevin and Brittany's mask misadventures on the bus and then his more recent attack on Daria and herself. DeMartino seemed to get more agitated as she went on to describe what the mask looked like, but also seemed reticent to talk about what it was that was bothering him.

Daria seemed just as agitated but more willing to speak her mind. "This is all well and good," she said testily, "but we need to get moving. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but . . . I'm worried about my little sister."

* * *

"Like, oh my _gawd_, that constant _knock_ing is starting to get _annoy_ing," Sandi said, shaking her head at the impossible rudeness of some people. To help drown out the noise coming from outside, she cranked up the CD player sitting on the bureau next to the blaring television. "Like, what are they doing out there anyway?" she yelled over the ear-splitting pop tunes.

"I dunno," Quinn replied, "but I thought I heard someone scr-"

"_What?_"

Quinn leaned in and shouted directly into Sandi's ear, "_I think I heard someone screaming earlier!_"

"Oh, Kuh-winn, you have _such_ an imagination," Sandi said, brushing her off. "That's probably why you _imagined_ that those pajama bottoms would work with that top!"

A sudden spat of nasty laughter from Tori's direction cut over the noise. Quinn frowned and jerked her head over, but the blonde had already managed to feign a look of complete innocence. Tiffany sipped on her Diet Ultra and seemed to be completely lost in the music, oblivious to the political situation going on around her. With an angry sigh and no allies to rely on, Quinn turned from the group, sat down in one of the chairs, and pulled open a curtain to look outside.

She gave a small shriek when she saw Jane standing outside, pressed up against the glass and looking just as surprised to see her. After they both recovered, Jane started moving her lips and gesturing wildly, but Quinn couldn't make out even a hint of whatever it was she was saying. Finally losing patience, Jane pointed emphatically at Quinn, then herself, then the door.

Quinn was overcome with sudden indecision. It was clear that Jane wanted in for some reason, and after having to deal with Tori and Sandi all night, Quinn was just about ready to do anything to shake things up, but Sandi had initiated that fashion lockdown. Letting Jane in or - more preferably - going outside would cause a actual, open confrontation, and Quinn wasn't sure she was ready to risk that.

Breaking her train of thought for a second, Quinn looked up to see that Jane had turned to the side and was waving someone over. Once finished, she turned back to the window and banged a fist up against it, then pointed at the door again pleadingly. _Please!_ she mouthed silently.

Quinn glanced back at the rest of the Fashion Club uncertainly, then motioned for just one second and ran back to where Sandi was standing. She reached over to shut off the TV and pause the CD player, which caused the other girls to start groaning and complaining.

"Guys, guys!" she said, motioning her hands for quiet. "Listen! That girl who hangs out with my . . . uh, cousin, right? She's, like, right outside and it looks important. I'm gonna let her in, okay?"

Tori and Tiffany looked to Sandi, who set down her drink and crossed her arms. She leveled an imperious glare at her vice president and started tapping a finger disapprovingly. "Kuh-_winn_, you _know_ that all contact with the outside world until it is time to board the bus has been for_bidden_. I thought we had all agreed that it was for the _best_."

"Yes, I _know_, Sandi," Quinn said, trying her best to keep rising irritation out of her voice. "But-"

"No buts!" Sandi cut her off. "Tell your cousin's friend or whatever that it will simply have to wait until tomorrow."

As Quinn pressed her teeth tightly together and tried to think of what to do or say next, a sudden frantic banging at the window caught all of the girls' attention. Quinn spun around to see that Stacy had joined Jane and was pounding on the glass with tears in her eyes. They could just distantly make out that she was shouting their names and something about goggles or googles. As the four girls stared back in confusion, the lean frame of Mr. DeMartino loomed over Jane and Stacy.

"_YOU FOUR!_" he yelled, his impossibly loud voice carrying through perfectly as Jane and Stacy covered their ears. "_GET OUT HERE! **NOW!**_"

Quinn and Tori both leaped for the door in a blind panic while Tiffany slowly trailed behind them. As Tori flipped the deadbolt, Quinn looked back to see Sandi standing stock still, eyes wide.

"Sandi!" she called out. "Come on! Grab the keys and let's go! You heard Mr. DeMartino!"

As if coming out of a trance, Sandi shook her head and reached down to grab the motel room keys from her purse. She looked down at them as she hefted them in her hand, then looked up at the three girls standing at door. The clouded look on her face slowly cleared and then steeled over. She closed her hands over the keys and held them to her chest.

"No," she said defiantly.

Quinn stared back at her, flabbergasted. "What?"

"_No,_" Sandi repeated more emphatically. "The fashion lockdown is still in place, and I intend to keep observing it."

Quinn glanced back at Tori and Tiffany, but she could immediately see that whatever support they had held for Sandi had been scared right out of them by DeMartino's tone and Stacy's tears. She held her hand out to Sandi.

"Fine, whatever," she said testily. "Just give us one of the keys, and we'll tell you what's going on when we get back."

Sandi shook her head and turned half away as if to protect the keys from Quinn's grasping touch. "No. If any of you go out that door, you . . . you will no longer be part of the Fashion Club, and you will not be allowed back into this room."

Quinn stared back at her, aghast. "You can't be serious," she said.

Smugness flooded back into Sandi's expression. "Oh, yes, I'm _very_ serious," she said in a tone that gradually regained its normal confidence. "Anyone who wishes to stay in the Fashion Club will stay here. Anyone who wishes to spend the night out in the parking lot may join the losers outside."

Realization that Sandi was trying for a power play right in the middle of a possible emergency hit Quinn's stomach like ice water. Worry about Stacy had been eating Quinn up all night, and now that her friend was standing outside the window looking more and more desperate as her other so-called "friend" continued trying to play mind games, Quinn was finally resolved to do something about it.

"_Fine,_" she said. Pushing past Tori and Tiffany, she grasped the doorknob, turned it, and stepped out into the night. The other two girls followed suit, shutting the door behind them.

Sandi barely heard the slam over the sound of her own rapidly beating heart.

Outside, Stacy immediately jumped on Quinn and enclosed her in a huge hug. The hysterical girl began to gush out a string of sentences that Quinn assumed were meant to be some kind of explanation and sounded as if they were combined with statements of relief that the rest of the club was awake and alive.

Looking around, Quinn could see Mr. DeMartino and Ms. DeFoe checking on the other two girls while Daria and Jane stood nearby. While the other girls were mostly dressed, the teachers appeared to be in their night clothes. All of them looked equally worn out, however, and Quinn thought she could see the beginnings of a bruise welling up on Daria's cheek, right under her left eye.

"Where is Miss GRIFFIN?" DeMartino asked. "I thought I saw her _inside the room!_"

"Sheeeee's not coming oooooout," Tiffany told him with a shrug. "She's got dedicaaaaatioooooon."

"And the keys to the room," Quinn added sourly.

The history teacher snarled and tried to open the motel room door, but it had already been relocked from the inside. He bashed the bottom of his fist against the door and demanded to be let in, but the only response he got was a top 20 hit being played at full volume. He swore under his breath and kicked at the door, stubbing his bare toe and causing him to curse even louder.

"What's going on?" Quinn asked as DeMartino jumped around, holding his foot.

The assembled group looked at each other briefly before Daria said, "Huh. I guess we should have thought about how to explain what's going on before we started knocking on doors."

"It's . . . complicated, girls," Ms. DeFoe told them. "The short version is that there's a dangerous person on the loose and we need to find everyone that's awake and then find someplace safe. We'll explain everything when we get there, but for now we need to keep knocking on doors, okay? If no one answers, just move down to the next room and try again. And stay within sight of the group at all times."

Their heads buzzed with questions, but the three Fashion Clubbers simply nodded.

"What about the queen bee?" Jane asked.

"I could break open the WINDOW and _drag her out_, I suppose," DeMartino said speculatively.

"Break it with _what?_"

He looked around himself briefly, then slumped his shoulders. There were no rocks nearby bigger than a millimeter across, the only vehicles containing anything worth throwing were all the way on the other side of the lot, and due to the late hour and the hurry to keep moving, none of the group were wearing their shoes or boots, just slippers at most.

"_Rrrrr_, very WELL. We shall simply have to continue ON and come back for her LATER! Hopefully, she'll be safer than WE are, since _she_ is locked away safe in her room while _we_ are _traipsing about in the open like SITTING DUCKS!_"

"Walking ducks," Jane pointed out as they returned to moving from door to door.

"_Walking sitting ducks!_" DeMartino grudgingly amended.

* * *

Sandi sat on the bed, listening to the faint sounds of the search party outside fade into the distance. Once she was certain she wouldn't be able to hear them at all anymore, she stood up and turned the CD player off. Silence rushed in to fill the room, leaving her with nothing but a pair of matching keys and her thoughts.

It was a trick, it had to be. Unpopular kids like that weird art chick were always trying to get attention somehow. And Stacy had probably joined her just because she was miffed about being subtly pushed out of the Fashion Club. Mr. DeMartino was a little harder to figure out, but teachers were always going on about helping people and broadening horizons and not putting others down and other such nonsense, so his involvement could have been part of some kind of outreach program for unpopular students.

They just wanted to make the popular kids look like gullible idiots or something, Sandi was sure of it. Quinn and the others might have been fooled, but Sandi wasn't. She was inside her room, safe, where nothing and no one could get at her, not even her traitorous former friends.

A sudden pang hit Sandi's heart as she paced back and forth. For the briefest of moments, she heard her conscience whispering softly in her ear, but she brushed it away before it could get a chance to settle in. There were _rules_, and they hadn't followed those rules. It hurt to lose Quinn and Tiffany . . . and even Tori and Stacy, she was surprised to find. But it had been necessary.

And besides, there was the possibility for an opportunity here. She could blossom despite the destruction of her circle of friends. She could find new friends, build up a new Fashion Club, and thrive. She was popular. She was attractive. She had charisma. She had panache. She had _style_. It surely wouldn't be hard to do.

Worries safely packed away for the time being and finding nothing else in particular to do on her own, Sandi made an executive decision. It was time to get some sleep.

At first she was worried that sleep might not come for her. The earlier excitement had set her nerves on edge, and she found herself laying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to think about things. But then she remembered her sleeping mask, pulled it out from under the bed, and put it on.

It was a little bulkier than she remembered. It covered her entire face and the small viewport didn't completely block out the light like it should have, but it worked. Within moments, she was fast asleep.

* * *

"Why isn't anyone answering?" Tori cried out in frustration. They had almost reached the end of the line at the Erbie Motel, putting them near the buses, but so far every room had stayed dark, every door unopened, and it was beginning to fray everyone's nerves, even those who still held doubts as to what was happening.

Claire patted the girl's shoulder reassuringly as she passed by to the next room. "It'll be alright," she said, a phrase she seemed to be using more and more frequently as the night wore on. It sounded hollow in her own ears, but she felt it still needed to be said. "We just need to keep moving."

When they reached DeMartino's room, they found it to be unlocked. Anthony opened the door and stepped in carefully, but there was no masked killer on the other side. There was only Coach Gibson, still snoozing away in the far bed and blissfully unaware of the events going on around him. While the rest of the group moved on to check on the last few rooms, DeMartino stayed behind to quickly throw some clothes on over his sleepwear.

Claire and Stacy took the next door down, Daria and Jane the second, leaving the three other girls with the last. Quinn sighed, raised her hand, and was just about to knock when she heard a strange, fast-paced _whiffwhiffwhiffwhiffwhiff_ noise followed by a heavy _THUNK_.

Tiffany's head jerked violently to the side, slamming against the wall of the building and carrying her body over with it. Her legs were no longer under her, but she was held up by the tire iron that protruded from just behind her temples, the sharp prying end embedded in the wall and the lugnut wrench sticking out into the night at an angle.

The image of a cheap comedian wearing a prop arrow that looked like it had gone through his head suddenly popped into Quinn's mind, and if the very real image in front of her hadn't been so gruesome, she felt she might have started giggling uncontrollably. As a scream tore its way out of her body, she noticed two things that made her heart want to stop working. First, she saw that she, Tori, and the wall were all spattered with blood. And second - and most horrifying - she could see that Tiffany was still blinking and trying to move her mouth.

"Quuuiiiiiiiiiiinn?" the impaled girl finally managed to get out. "Whyyyy caaaan't I seeeeeeeee y- . . ."

And then she was gone.

Tori and Quinn backed away from the dead body, both of them still shrieking at the top of their lungs. Quinn had just enough presence of mind to look over at where the tool had come flying from, but that simply made her mental situation worse. Standing several yards away in the parking lot was Sandi barefoot, in her nightgown, and with what looked like a paintball mask strapped securely to her face.

Suddenly, Daria filled Quinn's vision. She was yelling something and had her hands on Quinn's shoulders, which she then used to turn the terror-stricken redhead and push her into a run. Glancing over her shoulder momentarily, Quinn could see that Jane was doing the same with Tori as Ms. DeFoe followed closely behind with Stacy and shouted "Anthony! _Anthony!_" over and over again.

Mr. DeMartino stepped out of his room wearing his normal khakis and button-up shirt combination, his shoes held loosely in his hand. He had heard the screams and Claire calling his name, so he quickly scanned the parking lot and immediately zeroed in on the young Griffin girl.

His blood ran cold when he saw the mask she was wearing, but rather than dwell on it, he erupted into a run. He stayed close to the building, trying to follow the fleeing women, and almost ran straight into Tiffany's dangling body. The unhealthy snack food he had eaten for dinner the previous evening threatened to come back up on him for a moment as he screeched to a halt.

Looking to his right, he saw that the masked Sandi was advancing on him. She had undoubtedly killed Tiffany just as he had purportedly killed Kevin, but . . . she was just a girl. He wondered for a moment why he had been trying to run away from her and decided it had just been that he was spooked by the mask.

Anthony DeMartino was afraid of only one woman, and Sandi Griffin wasn't that woman. Curling his lip, he reached up to grip the tire iron sticking out of Tiffany's head and yanked on it.

He yanked on it again.

And again.

Realization of just how much strength it would have taken to throw the iron hard enough to go through a human head and then stick so far into a wall that it couldn't be pulled out brought DeMartino back to his senses. Sandi was almost upon him, showing absolutely none of the fear that suddenly overtook him once again. He carefully edged around Tiffany, trying to stay as far away from Sandi as possible, then took off without looking back.

If he had looked back, he would have seen Sandi grip the end of the tire iron, place one foot up against the building, and then jerk the tool out of the wall without any real sign of strain or effort. She extricated the iron from the dead girl's head, then used her gown to wipe the blood from the metal.

With dispassionate, deliberate slowness, she turned and followed her prey as they crossed the street to Nick's Inn.

Curses filled the air as Anthony yelled angrily at the rocks and broken pieces of asphalt that were biting into his feet. "Where were you when I NEEDED you, you little BASTARDS?" he demanded of them, then cursed himself for having dropped his shoes while trying to pull out the tire iron and then forgetting to pick them back up.

Ahead of him, the women had reached the first building of the inn and were furiously knocking on doors. Rather than stay for a few moments like they had at the other motel, they were knocking and running at the same time, waiting for nothing and hoping the noise they were making was enough of a warning for anyone that was still awake.

Finally free of gravel lining the road, DeMartino pelted his way across the lot to join them. Once they were about halfway down the row, he looked over his shoulder to see Sandi slowly marching toward them, tire iron in hand. He was just about to call off the knocking and recommend a full retreat when one of the doors between them and her opened and a young red-headed man stepped out, peering around curiously.

"_Upchuck!_" Jane yelled. "Get your keister over here!"

The school lothario perked up at the sound, then perked up even further when he saw the group Jane was with. Completely ignoring DeMartino's presence, he opened his arms wide, walked toward them, and said, "Why of course, my delightful Miss Lane! And to what do I owe the pleasure of the bountiful bevy of babes I see before m-_uff!_"

Charles Ruttheimer III fell to his hands and knees as the sound of metal hitting concrete rang out behind him. He reached behind his head and then brought his hand back around to see that it was stained with blood. Looking around to see what had hit him, he saw Sandi walking up behind him. She stopped a few feet away, crouched down to pick up her iron, and then closed the rest of the distance.

"Wha-" was all the boy could manage to get out before she swatted him across the face with her weapon, knocking several of his teeth loose. He quickly curled into a ball, trying to protect himself, but she continued to rain blows down on his arms, legs, sides, and back with brutal force.

DeMartino watched the assault with growing horror, then felt his sleeve being plucked. He looked down to see Stacy staring back up at him.

"Mr. DeMartino," she said quietly. "She's distracted . . . _the mask_, Mr. DeMartino!"

Remembering the theory that Jane had posited earlier, he nodded. "Get everyone else AWAY from here and start EXPLAINING things," he told her. "If you hear me SHOUT, then I want _all of you to start running_, and don't stop until this place is a SPECK in the BACKGROUND!"

Stacy nodded understanding, then latched onto Claire and started speaking rapidly. They, Daria, and Jane then ran off to catch Quinn and Tori, who were still banging on doors and screaming for help. Anthony, meanwhile, slowly approached Sandi and Charles.

Just as Stacy had said, the masked girl seemed to be completely distracted. Charles had stopped moving entirely, but she continued to circle around him, pounding on him at regular intervals. When Anthony was finally within a few feet of her, he started to move around with her, trying to stay behind her as he inched closer.

The tire iron _whiffed_ through the air as Sandi suddenly spun around and swung it at him, but his muscles had already been tensed to dodge at any moment and it sailed harmlessly through open air. Before she could bring it back around for a counterswing, he lunged forward, grabbed the underside of the mask, and flipped it up into the air.

Sandi dropped the iron, then took a few staggering steps before collapsing next to it on the ground. Ignoring the girl for the moment, DeMartino knelt down next to Charles, but immediately slumped his shoulders, crestfallen. Though he had tried to protect his head with his hands and arms, the blows had simply been too strong for Charles' skull. His broken forearm had been crushed down into a dent in his head, and a pool of blood was forming underneath, undoubtedly pouring from his ear.

Sandi began to stir, drawing the teacher's attention. Gingerly, he scooped her up and started walking the direction the other girls had gone. He gave the area a cursory glance before leaving but was unsurprised to see that the paintball mask had disappeared.

A few yards along, Sandi came fully to all at once, her eyes rolling around in surprise as she started to struggle in his arms. "Like, what are you doing?" she yelled, slapping DeMartino on the chest. "How did I get out here? Let go of me! This is, like, sexual harassment or something! I'll totally scream rape!"

Struggling to keep his balance as his passenger squirmed, DeMartino finally managed to get her set down but kept a hand on her arm and dragged her along as he continued walking, doing his best to keep her attention on him rather than the ugly scene behind them or the bloodstains on her nightgown.

"Miss Griffin," he said firmly as she started to complain and slap at him again, "please be SILENT and I will explain EVERYTHING." 


	4. Stage 4

"Like, that doesn't explain _anything!_" Sandi said angrily as she scrubbed maniacally at her nightgown. "Why is this thing taking us over? What does it want from us? Why is it doing this?"

They all looked at each other, but none of them seemed to have any answers. None of them were certain that Sandi actually wanted any in any case. She was completely absorbed in the task of rubbing out the large pink spot on the front of her gown, grinding away at it with a small scrub brush that released fresh waves of bleach smell into the motel office with every swipe.

"Why did it do this to _me?_" the young girl continued after a few moments. "Why did it make me ki-kill Tiffany and Upchu- and Chuh-Charles? Why didn't I just li-isten to you and guh-get out of the room? Wuh-why is this happening? _Why can't I get this fucking stain to go away?_"

Tears streaming down her face and throat filled with a scream of bitter frustration, Sandi slammed the brush down on the counter and then threw it across the room before breaking down completely and sinking to the floor. Thin arms clad in denim sleeves suddenly found their way around her as Stacy sat down next to her on the floor and pulled her close, stroking her hair and whispering comforting words.

"I'm suh-sorry," Sandi was saying in between sobs. "I shuh-shouldn't have tried tuh-to kick you out of the Fashion Cluh-ub, I shuh-shouldn't have . . . all my fault . . . I'm so suh-orry . . . "

As she continued comforting Sandi, Stacy looked up at Tori and then Quinn, who turned to Daria. The two sisters had been, uncharacteristically for them, holding hands since the group had gotten back to the office of Nick's Inn. Quinn gently squeezed Daria's hand, then stood up to join her friends only to find Daria keeping her hold.

"It's okay," Quinn said quietly. She motioned her head toward Jane and the teachers. "Go do your brain thing. We'll take care of Sandi."

Nodding slowly, Daria let go and left the four surviving Fashion Club members to keep each other from going off the deep end. She sat on the office desk next to Jane, who nudged her slightly with her shoulder.

"So," the artist said wearily, "nothing like a little murder to bring sisters together, huh?"

"Yah," Daria returned without any irony whatsoever. She took in and released a deep breath, then said, "Okay. So. While Sandi did raise some very good questions, we should probably concentrate more on _how_ he's doing this than _why_."

"What if there _isn't_ a how?" Jane asked. "I mean . . . he's a ghost or something, right? How are we supposed to second guess something that isn't real?"

"But he IS real, Miss Lane," said Mr. DeMartino. "And everything that is REAL follows RULES. We just have _figure out those rules_."

"So what do we know that can help us understand those rules?" Daria asked. "We know that Sandi was alone when she was possessed. What about the others?"

Claire shook her head. "Kevin said that he was with Brittany when he blanked out."

"And I was in the room with Coach GIBSON. Though he was ASLEEP at the time."

"Then you _were_ alone, in a sense."

"I _suppose_," DeMartino admitted. "But unless Kevin was LYING - which I _wouldn't very much doubt_, except he would have no REASON to lie about being _with_ Miss Taylor - then he wasn't alone in ANY sense."

"So maybe it's not being alone," Daria said. "What were you doing just before you came to in the parking lot, Mr. DeMartino?"

The history teacher rubbed at his stubbled jaw for a second. "I took my blood pressure mediCAtion," he said, then glowered at Daria and Jane preemptively. "Yes, that's right, _blood pressure medication_. Don't everyone look TOO surprised. But after that, I-"

He stopped mid-sentence, then looked thoughtful. "No, just _before_ that, the elecTRICITY went out for a few moments. I took my PILL, READ for a little bit, and then went to BED." Horror began to spread across his face. "That MASK. That damnable MASK. _I remember now!_ THAT's when I put the MASK on!"

Ms. DeFoe let out a short squeak. "When Kevin was attacking me right here, I could see through the lens of his goggles! His eyes were closed the entire time!"

"You think he was _asleep_ when he jumped you?" Jane asked, seemingly caught between finding the idea incredulous and completely plausible. "If he was with Brittany, what the heck was he doing aslee- oh, wait. Of course. He was with his _girlfriend_. He probably fell asleep right after they finished their 'walk', like a typical guy. And the odds that Sandi fell asleep shortly after we left her?"

"They're starting to look about even," Daria said grimly.

"So what are we saying here?" Claire asked. "That if we want to keep from becoming a psychotic masked killer, _we can't go to sleep?_"

Daria squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed the area around her bruised cheek. "It seems that way," she said, exasperated. "But why just us? There's plenty of people here, all of them asleep. So asleep we can't wake them up, even. But this spirit thing doesn't jump into any of them, nor does it even seem interested in picking them off. What makes us so different?"

"Maybe he's just enjoying the hunt," Jane suggested with distaste.

"CHARLES wasn't a HUNT. That was an _opportunistic strike_." DeMartino frowned. "No, there is something ELSE that coNNECTS us. After the POWER outage-"

Daria snapped her fingers. "The power outage," she said. "You mentioned that before. Jane and I were getting ice from the machine near our room when it happened."

"I was worried about Stacy, so I was going over to check on her," Ms. DeFoe chimed in. "I was just crossing the road when it happened. It was . . . _strange_. Everything went quiet, like a complete vacuum of sound."

"I really have to say that it's bothering me to be talking about something that, by all rights, should not exist," Daria said, "but it seems possible that the power outage was this sleepwalking demon . . . I don't know, 'arriving'? And while what binds us as potential killers is that we might fall asleep, what got us into this predicament in the first place is that we were awake when it started. Kevin and Brittany were probably in the middle of their constitutional, the Fashion Club was having one of their parties, Stacy was . . . actually, I'm not sure, and what Charles was doing up so late probably shouldn't be dwelled upon.

"Are we missing anything?"

"He's blocked the phones somehow." Claire shuddered at the memory of the dial tone-less non-sound. "The land lines, anyway. We haven't tried any cellphones."

After several moments of silence, Daria said, "Okay, I suppose that's it, then. So . . . what do we do now?"

DeMartino huffed. "Why, Miss MORGENdorffer," he said, "I would think making a PLAN would be YOUR job in this _unfortunate turn of events_."

The young girl gave him a look of surprise. "Me?" she asked. "But, I mean . . . _you're_ the teachers . . . "

"Dear, you may not have noticed, but you sort of took control of the conversation the second you walked over here," Claire said with a reassuring pat on Daria's arm. "You just guided us through figuring out what's going on."

"Yah, and the only person I know who knows more about horror movies than me is you," Jane added.

Daria turned back to Mr. DeMartino, looking a bit dazed. He snorted and crossed his arms, saying, "While it does IRK me that a STUDENT is taking charge of a _life or death situation_ . . . I must admit that you are the ONLY student I would have _take that task_. We are in an inSANE SITUATION here, and I think we may need to be LOGICAL and LEVELHEADED if we are going to make it out ALIVE. Your exact amount of BOOKsmarts aside, Daria, you are perhaps the most LOGICAL and LEVELHEADED PERSON out of _all of Lawndale High!_"

She swallowed hard, as if trying to digest the things she had just been told. Her thoughts raced out of control for a few moments, then she collected them and clamped them down hard as she looked across the room to see Quinn holding on to Sandi but looking back at her with a vague glimmer of hope.

"Okay," she said, standing up. "Let's make a plan."

Together, the four of them walked back over to the front of the office. Sandi looked less of a wreck than Daria had been expecting. Tears still tracked their way down her face, but it seemed that she had gotten most of her makeup off so it wouldn't smear, probably with the help of the other three girls.

Daria briefly checked on Quinn to make sure she was still reasonably alright, then everyone sat on the floor so as to be on the same level. Ms. DeFoe gave a quick rundown of what they had reasoned out.

"So what do we do?" Quinn asked.

"First off, we stay awake as long as we can," Daria told the group. "With the insomnia that's been hitting me for the past while, that shouldn't be too hard for me, but the rest of you need to help each other out. Now, we're going to have to split up-"

Voices rose all around her in complaint and disbelief. She motioned her hands for silence and eventually got it, but Jane couldn't resist putting in one last comment.

"I think I want to change my vote for leader," she grumped.

Daria slid her a dirty look, then continued. "Yes, we're going to have to split up," she said, "but we all have to stay in groups of two or more at all times. Everyone has to watch out for everyone else. If you think someone's about to doze off, then pinch them, hit them, slap them, throw cold water in their face, whatever you have to do to keep them awake and alert. As long as we can do that, there's a good chance this thing won't be able to take any of us over.

"Now, the reason we have to split up is because there are a few different ways we might be able to beat this thing, so there are a few different jobs that need to be done. The default plan is to just wait it out. It's-" she looked up at the clock hanging on the office wall, "-just a little after three right now. Sunrise should be in about two or three hours, and . . . I know this is a bit of a stretch, but maybe our ghost will lose power in the daylight. If nothing else, the daytime gives us a better chance of someone from outside of Erbie coming along and finding us.

"Stacy, I saw you carrying a nail file earlier. Do you still have it?"

The girl nodded, sending her braids bobbing as she held up the item in question.

"Good. I want you and Jane to-"

A groan came deep from Jane's chest as Stacy's face dropped into a sort of haunting despair. "No offense to Stacy or anything, _amiga_," Jane said, "but I kinda thought you and me would be on a team."

"Your job," Daria continued, glaring at them both, "is to go over to the convenience store and gather supplies. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting a little hungry, and having some food just in case wouldn't hurt. Definitely grab everything caffeinated you can carry. You should also pick up some first aid kits or other medical supplies you can find, especially anything that will help us stay awake.

"The reason I'm sending you two is because you'll be going off the reservation, so to speak. If there's anything stranger going on out there than what's going on here at the motels, then we need the only armed person and our fastest runner there to fend it off or get away from it if necessary. Which reminds me . . . if you see anything over there that can be used as a weapon, bring that back with you as well."

"Hold on, Daria," Claire said, suddenly concerned. "This thing is taking _us_ over. We can't hurt the person wearing the mask!"

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Daria tried reassuring her. "But the situation might change at any moment, and we need to be prepared. And our opponent certainly isn't afraid of using weapons against _us_. I'd certainly feel better if I had something I could use to at least try and block his attacks."

The teacher still looked unhappy about it, but nodded in grudging agreement.

"Anyway, in the meantime, we need to check the last couple of buildings for anyone else who might be awake," said Daria. "Sandi and . . . I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"Tori," the blonde said in a small, frightened voice.

"Sandi and Tori, that will be your job. Just start here next to the office and work your way back over to the third building. If anyone answers, just take them along with you and then come back here when you're finished. Tell them whatever you have to to get them to come with you.

"Quinn, you and I are going to go check on the vehicles in the other lot. We may have to wait this out, but I'd rather not if we have a choice. If we can't get any of the buses to run, we'll check and see if there's a car with the keys still in it."

"Oh! Or I can just hotwire it!" Quinn said brightly. When she noticed the scowl on Daria's face, she shrugged and said, "There was this guy back in Highland, and he didn't have a car, right, but he, like, said he could _get_ one somewhere, and, well, one thing led to another and I learned how to hotwire a car!"

"Moving on," Daria said with an exasperated sigh. "Mr. DeMartino, Ms. DeFoe . . . I'm sorry, but this last job is a little crappy."

"We're grown ADULTS, Miss Morgendorffer," Anthony said. "I think we can HANDLE it."

She looked down at the floor as she spoke. "I want the two of you to find and gather all the bodies together and store them somewhere."

" . . . oh," Anthony said into the absolute silence that fell over the group.

"If there was the possibility of a police investigation, I'd recommend leaving them where they are," Daria continued, "but I think this situation is a little ways out of normal police jurisdiction. And though we may not have liked all the people who have died here tonight, or maybe even hated a couple of them, they still deserve better than to just lay cooling out in the open."

Ms. DeFoe put a hand on Daria's shoulder. "That's very respectful of you, Daria," she said.

The young girl looked up at her, wiped at her nose, and nodded before turning back to the group as a whole. "Okay," she said, "we all know what we're supposed to be doing. So let's do it."

* * *

Outside, the night hung dark and ominous. The small group of people trudging their way out into it tried to ignore the silent oppression hanging over them and moved to complete their assigned tasks.

The teachers decided to collect Charles first since he was just across the parking lot and DeMartino was eager to get his hands on the discarded tire iron, if not to use it himself then to at least deprive their foe of a potential weapon. They had further decided that they would bring all of the bodies back to the office of Nick's Inn to be placed in one of the storage rooms in the back. There had been an entire set of shelves containing nothing but bed sheets, and Claire intended to use them to cover the dead students.

Sandi and Tori set to checking rooms immediately, the brunette knocking loudly while the blonde checked to see if the door was unlocked before they moved down to the next one.

Daria and Quinn crossed the street once again holding hands. Jane watched them go and briefly wondered which one of them had initiated the contact, or if perhaps it had been some mutual symbol of sisterly affection brought on by the danger surrounding them. From all the stories Daria had been telling, she and Quinn had been getting closer lately anyway, especially after some big fight between their mom and their aunts had erupted at their house.

Generally, Jane approved. Quinn was an annoyance, but she was still Daria's sister. Jane sometimes wished she even half as close with her own siblings as Daria was with Quinn. She also realized how sad that really was, and turned her thoughts back to her own current annoyance.

"Guess we'd better get moving," she said to Stacy, then started in the direction of the convenience store next to the Erbie Motel. Stacy hurried to catch up to Jane's long strides, then walked along beside her in silence.

They were across the street and just about to step into the convenience store lot when Jane sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. Stacy looked up to see that the taller girl was screwing her face up a bit, looking like she was trying to force herself to say or do something.

"So, Stacy, look," she finally said, "I just wanna say I'm sorry, right? For the whole thing on the bus yesterday. I mean, I'm not exactly sure what I'm apologizing _for_ here . . . maybe I'm sorry for having dared try to cross over the whole popularity barrier to bother you? Or maybe I'm sorry that once I did, we just kinda . . . didn't connect, or whatever. I probably should have just left you alone and found something else to entertain myself with. Like drawing penises on Daria's face while she was asleep."

Stacy giggled, then felt her heart sink as she remembered how hard she had tried to avoid talking to Jane, how fervently she had hoped that the other girl wouldn't keep talking to her for fear of her own already slipping popularity. It seemed horribly petty now that she thought about it, which made her feel even worse when she realized just how little she thought about such things.

"You don't have to apologize," she said more soberly. "It's not your fault. I'm the one who just starting rambling on and on, being all 'Stacy' again."

"Is being all 'Stacy' that bad?" Jane asked. She stopped walking and leaned up against one of the pump stations that they had just reached.

The other girl took a few more paces before stopping and turning around. The overhead lights had been shut down for the night, leaving her surrounded by a dim halo from the security lights shining from inside the main building. Her face, barely visible, was twisted in a sudden spate of self-loathing.

"Do you have any sisters?" she asked.

Jane chuckled at the parallel to her own previous thoughts. "Yah, a few of them, unfortunately."

"I've got one, Marianne. She's a few years older than me. Already in college. She's so pretty, and popular, and she always knows just the right thing to say, or do, or wear. It's just . . . _effortless_ for her. And I try _so hard_ to be like that, but I just don't know how to! I'm never sure what I should be wearing, I always follow what everyone else is doing, and when I start talking, it just all comes out like a jumbled mess . . . like what I'm doing now!"

"Hey, hey, calm down, _breathe_," Jane said to the increasingly agitated girl. "You're alright, you aren't babbling."

Stacy wiped at her eyes and looked over at Jane hopefully. "I'm not?"

"Nah. I get it totally. My sister Penny runs off to all these places in South America, and when she comes back, she's usually got all these neat little nick-nacks that she picked up along the way. When I was younger, I'd always go out exploring, finding rocks and fallen tree limbs and stuff, and I'd bring 'em back to the house and pretend they were ancient native idols or some weapon used by a primitive tribe.

"Anyway, point is, we all want to be like our cooler older sisters, right? Heck," she added conspiratorially, "I even hear Quinn's trying to make better grades just like Daria!"

The two girls laughed gently.

"But I'm not some jungle explorer and you aren't the belle of the college ball," Jane continued. "And so what? Just find what _you_ can do, and do it. And I'm starting to sound like Mr. O'Neill, aren't I?"

Stacy laughed again, but shook her head. "No," she said earnestly. "And thank you."

"No problemo. And see? If we put a little effort into it, we can have a perfectly civilized conversation. Now, are you ready to go inside?"

"Well, sure," Stacy said as she turned to peer through the windows. "But it looks like they're closed up for the-"

She stopped short when Jane stepped around her, lugging a broken half of a cinder block. The spindly girl grunted as she began to spin, slowly at first but with gaining momentum, and then tossed the chunk of brick through the nearest window, smashing it to pieces.

"That's okay," the artist said as she dusted off her hands. "I had a key."

"Where . . . where did you get that?" Stacy asked, her jaw hanging in shock.

Jane pointed behind them. "Next to the gas pump," she explained.

"Why in the world would they have something like that sitting next to a gas pump?"

"How should I know?" Jane returned with a shrug. "Ours is not to ponder the mind of the rural convenience store employee, ours is but to get in there and get some snackage before we waste away to nothing. Watch your feet."

Stacy immediately found that the other girl's warning was well worth heeding. Both of them were still bereft of their footwear, and though most of the glass seemed to have come out in chunks, there were still plenty of sharp edges sitting around the mostly-empty frame. Jane picked a few remaining pieces out of the bottom of that frame and carefully made her way over and into the building. She warned Stacy again just as the other girl was hopping over, then pointed down at the floor where even more jagged glass glittered in the security lights.

They picked their way through the silicate minefield until they reached the counter on the other side. Jane hopped over, knocking over a display of lighters in the process, then disappeared into the back. Stacy was just about to call out and recommend either coming back or waiting for her when Jane reappeared just as suddenly as she'd left, a roll of garbage bags in one hand.

She pulled one of the bags out and tore it from the roll, then handed it to Stacy as she pulled out another for herself. The two girls snapped the bags open and started to prowl the few aisles in the building.

"Don't they have anything that's no calorie, fat free, or at least not made of all the worst parts of the animal?" Stacy bemoaned her choices.

"Only the bottled water," Jane said around a mouthful of candy bar as she tried to eat and shove junk food in her sack at the same time. "And I'm not 100% about that, either. Oh, thank _God!_"

"What? What is it?" Stacy whirled around to see Jane pop open a small bottle, pierce the freshness seal at the top, and dig out a wad of cotton before popping a few pills in her mouth.

"Ibuprofen," she said, dry swallowing. "My shoulders are _killing_ me." She threw the bottle and a few more items from the medicine rack into her sack and continued down the line.

Unable to decide between yuck-tastic pork rinds and sugar-laden chocolate just waiting to give her and everyone else zits, Stacy finally gave up and left the grocery shopping to Jane, who started filling the second bag enthusiastically with various bottled sodas. She wandered back to the counter, jumped over it, and scanned underneath it until she found her target, the phone.

The handset was wireless, but it had been tied to the base with a string. Stacy stared at it for a few moments until she realized that it was so customers could use it without fear of them walking off with it. She took the phone from its cradle, but even though it lit up when she pressed "talk", all she could get was the same creepy open-line sound as before.

After putting the phone back, she noticed a small box sitting on the floor underneath it. The box was filled with a plethora of small, undoubtedly lost-and-found items, mostly wallets, glasses, sets of keys, and - she noticed with a small amount of cheer - several cellphones. The cheer was short-lived, however, as she tried them one after another. The few that actually had any juice left in their batteries were either passcode locked or couldn't get any signal at all.

Disappointed, she threw the last one back into the box and wondered if any of the others were having better luck.

* * *

The first bus was easy to get into since the door had been left open. Once Daria stepped inside, she could see why. A small hatch just inside the door had been broken into, various tools sat just within. She felt certain that if she checked, she'd find that those tools did not include a tire iron.

Once she was inside the vehicle, she quickly scanned the interior. She didn't see anyone, but as it was one of the rental buses and not a school bus, there were dividers under each seat, blocking her view. There could be anyone hiding behind one of the rows of seats, waiting for her to let down her guard.

But hiding and lying in wait didn't seem to be their foe's MO. And if there was in fact anything else around playing a sneakier game, it didn't seem prudent to Daria to go running face first into it. For the moment, she simply had to trust that there wasn't anything back there.

She motioned for Quinn to come inside, then sat down in the driver's seat. "Keep an eye out," she said as she looked over the controls.

"Okay." Quinn nervously peered around, looking out through the door and windows occasionally, her muscles tensed for anything. "So how are we supposed to do this without the keys, anyway?" she asked. "I don't know how to hotwire a _bus_."

"Most buses don't have keys in the traditional sense," Daria told her. "But this should do the trick." She reached out and flipped a switch that sat under a red hood, then pressed her thumb down on the ignition button.

The only response was the soft click of the button itself. The engine stayed silent. With increasing impatience, she pressed the button a few more times, toggled one switch after another, but nothing continued to happen. She swore and stood up, shooing Quinn out the door.

"Shouldn't we, like, check the engine or something?" the red-head asked.

"Would you know what you were looking at if we did?"

Quinn shook her head.

"Neither would I. Let's try one of the school buses next."

Getting into the closed school bus was a bit more of a trial, but despite the work they put into getting inside, it remained dead, as did the next two they tried. Frustrated with the lack of success, Daria put her head down on the steering wheel of the fifth and final bus and fumed impotently.

"So, uh . . . should we go try the cars now?" Quinn asked.

Daria mumbled something incoherent toward the floorboard.

"Okay, is this, like, some kind of concentration technique or something?"

With a heavy sigh, Daria sat up a little and propped her head up. Her face was drawn, making her bruise stand out even more in the moonlight filtering through the windows. "No," she said. "I'm just wondering if there's any point. Whatever this bastard might be, he seems to have us isolated and locked down pretty tight. If we can't get so much as a stutter out of the buses, what are the chances any of the other vehicles will be working?"

Quinn laid a finger along her cheek, thought about it for a moment, then said, "I dunno, but wouldn't we feel better about it if we check them and they don't work than we would if we didn't check them and they do?"

"Good point, Quinn," Daria said, narrowing her eyes. "Almost . . . _suspiciously_ good. Alright. Let's get it over with, then."

Before they left the small island of buses, Daria took them back by the first vehicle so they could each grab a tool from the open compartment to arm themselves with. Quinn held a long, thin socket wrench in her left hand while Daria grasped the detachable handle of a hydraulic jack in her right. As they started making their way to the ancient sedan sitting in a parking spot two-thirds of the way across the lot, their free hands reached out and intertwined with each other.

"Does it . . . bother you at all that we keep doing this?" Daria asked, squeezing her fingers in a bit.

Quinn shook her head and squeezed back. "Nuh-uh," she said. "I do kinda wonder who started it, though."

"Well it wasn't me, that's for sure."

"Me neither."

"I just want to make sure you're still alright, is all. Mom and dad would never let me hear the end of it if something happened to you."

"Yah, same here."

"Alright, then."

"Right."

They stopped beside the sedan and stared down at it in silence for several moments.

"Quinn?"

"Yah?"

"I'm scared."

"_Oh thank God me too!_" Quinn said in a breathless exclamation. She slumped, looking as if she'd released a huge coil of tension from around herself.

"Not just about the dying thing," Daria continued, "but about this whole being-in-charge thing, too. This isn't really me. I'm not really a leader. Or a follower. I don't really know what I'm doing here, and I'm afraid more people are going to die, but this time it'll be my fault.

"I know I don't ask your opinion on things very often, but if you could keep doing like you did back at the bus, make sure I keep going . . . "

"Yah, Daria, no problem," Quinn said when her sister trailed off. "I can do that."

Daria let go of Quinn's hand and then gave her an awkward one-armed hug. "Okay then," she said, reaching down to try the passenger side door. "Let's see if we can walk out of here with a brand old car."

* * *

Charles' corpse sat in a small pool of blood that almost appeared reflective under the sodium glare of the lamps overhead. Anthony and Claire looked down on the crushed body sadly, then slipped on the latex gloves they had pilfered from the inn's cleaning cart. After Anthony retrieved the abandoned tire iron and slipped it through one of the belt loops on his pants, the two of them got to work straightening Charles out.

It was easier to do than they had expected. Rigor mortis hadn't had time to settle in yet, and the smashed bones gave the body even more flexibility than usual. Almost too much, as it turned out. Anthony tried to lift Charles' upper body by the shoulders, but one of them rolled out of the socket and caused him to lose his grip. Prepared for it the second time, he was able to keep hold of the boy's shirt and upper arm.

Claire then picked the body up by the legs, and together the two teachers started hauling it over to the office. They did their work without speaking. Though Charles had not been a large person by any means, leaving them plenty of energy and breath to converse if they wanted, both of them felt that having a conversation over the boy's dead body would be disrespectful.

After carrying the body around the front desk and into the back, Claire kicked open the door to one of the storage rooms in the back so they could set it down on the floor within. Anthony took a moment to lay the corpse's hands across its chest and straightened the legs out, then Claire took a sheet down from the shelves and spread it over the unfortunate, deceased Mr. Ruttheimer.

Just as they were preparing to cross the street and collect Kevin, terrified shrieks filled the air.

* * *

Sandi rapped her knuckles on the door until she thought she could feel the skin begin to peel back from the bone, but there was no answer. Tori rattled the knob, but the deadbolt was securely in place. A thin line of dread had wound its way around both girls' hearts, and every door that they tried with no results pulled that vicious cord tighter and tighter. Sandi especially looked to be on the verge of tears again, while Tori simply darted her eyes everywhere, cautious almost to the point of complete distraction.

A little halfway down the line, just as they had both begun to give up hope entirely, Tori turned one of the knobs and the door opened just a crack. Startled at the sudden movement, she and Sandi jumped back, small shrieks dying quickly in their throats.

The window was dark, as was the small sliver of room they could see between the door and its frame. Nothing moved as the girls stared at it, and it seemed like a preternatural stillness had descended around them.

"This is silly," Sandi suddenly said out loud, breaking the spell. "An open door is what we've been _looking_ for." She straightened up and walked boldly toward the door, hoping that the other girl wouldn't notice the confidence slipping from her face as she got closer and closer to the room.

Reaching out, she pushed the door open with trembling fingers. It slowly swung forward into the room, creaking slightly as it went. She stepped across the threshold and looked around, trying to mentally force her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She could just barely make out the large lumps on the beds when the overhead light flicked on, startling her and causing her to spin around.

Tori jerked nervously when Sandi turned on her and pulled her hand away from the light switch. "Um . . . sorry," she said.

"No, that is quite alright," Sandi assured her, taking a deep breath as her heart gradually slowed its pace back to normal. After collecting herself, she turned back to survey the room again.

Three girls were sleeping on the beds, two on the near mattress and one on the far. Sandi stepped over to each and looked them over before gently shaking them, but they all remained within their separate dreamlands. Despite that being the expected response, Sandi still felt some disappointment.

Noticing that the vacant fourth spot had been previously slept in, however, her disappointment quickly turned to curiosity. She walked around to the other side of the bed to find a bag and pair of sneakers that she instantly recognized.

"This was Stacy's room!" she called back to Tori, who mumbled something in return and looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Sandi momentarily considered digging through Stacy's bag to look for a cellphone, but decided against it. Normally she wouldn't have cared about invading the private property of one of her club's members - she had all the keypad lockout codes for all of their cells anyway - but an unusual feeling was crawling in her chest along with the now-familiar feelings of fear . . . guilt. She felt that pawing through Stacy's things without her permission would simply add on to that, and from what she had been told it probably wouldn't help matters anyway.

Instead, she picked up the pair of sneakers and moved to leave the room. Tori backed out to let her through the door, which she shut after turning the lights off. The blonde glanced down at the sneakers momentarily before moving on to the next door. She stopped when she noticed that the other girl wasn't following her.

Sandi was turning Stacy's shoes over and over in her hands, looking at them as if she wasn't really seeing them. An uncomfortable silence filled the air until Sandi began to talk in a small, wavering voice.

"Tori," she said, "I'm sorry. Not for actually inviting you to join the Fashion Club or whatever, because I really think you would be a good fit for us. But I'm sorry for trying to use you as, like, a tool or something to get Stacy out. She just . . . _annoys_ me sometimes, you know? But I shouldn't have done that to you."

The blonde girl winced and took a hesitant step back toward Sandi. "Um, Sandi? There's nothing to be sorry for. Not to me, anyway. I mean, I _knew_ what you were doing. I'd be a pretty poor popularity spotter if I didn't recognize that kind of move, right? I guess I just didn't really care at the time."

"We aren't nice people, are we?" Sandi asked, twisting the shoes a bit.

"Well . . . we're nicer than the axe murdering ghost that's trying to kill us, right?"

Both girls laughed for a few moments. When it had faded, Sandi sniffled a bit and said, "So, I know it, like, doesn't really _sound_ nicer with what's happened and all, but . . . I think I'd like it if you and Stacy were both in the club. Even if Tiffany were . . . still alive, I'd like to think I'd still say that. Maybe it's time the club started taking on more than four people at a time, anyway."

"Sure, Sandi," Tori said with a smile. "Um . . . we should . . . probably get back to work."

Sandi nodded and rejoined her.

Door after door passed by until the two girls eventually reached the end of the building. Stacy's room had remained the only one left open, and not a single waking soul had been seen or heard. Tori was just about to step from the walkway and cross over to the second building when Sandi grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, pointing silently at the corner with Stacy's shoes. Tori looked at her in confusion for a second, then realized what she had almost done.

Very carefully, the two girls creeped toward the corner. Very slowly, they leaned their heads out just enough to get a glimpse around the other side. Very quickly, they snatched back before anything could grab onto them, but there had been nothing there that they could make out.

Taking a second, longer look, all they could see were the inky black shadows of the buildings crossing each other thanks to the way the lot lights were positioned. With painfully cautious steps, they tip-toed out into the space between the buildings and prepared to cross over when Tori stopped.

"Wait . . . I think I see something," she whispered. She turned toward the side of the building they had been leaving, put her hand against the wall, then followed it for a few yards before coming to a halt and crouching down. Sandi followed close behind.

"There's something on the dirt here," Tori said. "Something like . . . oil? And I could have sworn I saw a-"

A dark shaped hurtled through the shadows and slammed into Tori, knocking her back into Sandi and pushing both girls backward. Sandi hit the ground and rolled head over heels from the force of the blow, nearly causing her to lose her grip on Stacy's sneakers. Once she had come to a stop, she picked herself up to find that she had been shoved back out into the parking lot, but that Tori was still within the shadows, tussling on the groud with a form she couldn't quite make out.

She and Tori both began to scream as the blonde flipped over on her stomach and scrabbled at the ground, pulling herself inch by inch toward Sandi as her attacker bore down on her back. Breaking out of her momentary paralysis, Sandi dropped the sneakers, lunged forward, and caught hold of Tori's hands. With adrenaline-fueled strength, she started pulling the other girl out into the lot as they both belted out scream after scream at the top of their lungs.

Sandi's terror grew severalfold once they had reached the edge of the light and she could see the glare of the lamps reflected off the goggles of a paintball mask. Two blonde tails of hair sprang out from behind the mask, but both they and it seemed to hang a little oddly on the skull they were attached to.

"Brittany, _stop!_" Sandi screeched, hoping she could get through to the cheerleader underneath the mask. "Please, God, just _stop!_"

But she didn't stop. With awkward movements that seemed horribly uncoordinated for the normally limber and talented cheerleader, she held on to Tori's pajama bottoms and slowly dragged herself up onto the other blonde's back, even as Sandi continued to pull both of them further along.

Finally, Brittany reached what seemed to be her intended destination. Sandi watched dumbstruck as the masked girl took Tori's head in her hands and began to twist it.

"Oh God please no please make her stop it hurts oh God I don't wanna die _I don't wanna die!_" Tori wailed just before pushing out a series of gurgling sounds as her neck snapped and her windpipe was clenched shut.

Sandi let go of Tori's hands and staggered back. Brittany ignored her as she continued to turn Tori's head until the slack face was staring up at the sky with dead eyes. And yet still she twisted it, seemingly determined to tear it off entirely.

"You SICK! MOTHER! FUCKER!" DeMartino roared as he suddenly rushed into the scene and planted a knee in Brittany's side. The masked girl was flung off of Tori's body by the blow and rolled to a stop a few yards away. Sandi felt Ms. DeFoe's hands on her shoulders as she watched Mr. DeMartino check his speed and fall to his knees.

He held a tire iron in one hand, raised high over his head, and with the other hand he quickly swatted the mask off of Brittany's face. With a sound of disgust, he jumped up and stumbled back from the prone cheerleader.

"She . . . she's _ALREADY DEAD!_"

"No! She can't be! _She just killed Tori!_" Sandi screamed as Ms. DeFoe simultaneously asked, "Anthony, are you _sure?_"

"Of COURSE I'm SURE!" the history teacher answered testily. "Her HEAD is already smashed in, and _I wasn't the one who DID it!_"

"But she was moving around!" Sandi insisted, her voice rising in hysteria. "She was crawling all over Tori, and she did . . . she did _that!_"

Claire squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. "Yes, we know, dear, we know," she said. "We saw it from across the lot. But what does this mean?"

Both of Anthony's eyes suddenly grew wide. "SHIT!" he yelled, then took off toward the other side of the parking lot.

After staring at his retreating form for a few seconds, Sandi picked up Stacy's shoes, then she and DeFoe quickly followed after him.

* * *

"Locked," Daria said sourly as she let go of the car door handle. "Figures. I guess we're bashing our wa-"

"_Shh!_" Quinn hissed suddenly. "Did you hear that?"

An annoyed invective died on Daria's lips when she heard the scuffing noise of fabric scraping across asphalt. It repeated a few seconds later, sending a chill up her back and definitely confirming that it wasn't just her or her sister's imagination. Hefting the jack handle over her shoulder like she was preparing to hit a baseball, she stepped forward to put Quinn between her and the car.

"Who's there?" she called out, her eyes scanning the lot but seeing no one. Another scrape caught her attention just as she noticed movement in the shadows under the overhang of the building. She turned toward it as a slippered foot slid into the light at an awkward angle and tried to settle on its side before flopping over and landing properly.

Tiffany shuffled out after it, her face obscured by the paintball mask and her movements strange and jittery. As soon as she realized who it was she was looking at, Quinn gripped her socket wrench with both hands and screamed.

"_She's dead!_" the panicking girl screeched. "_She's dead she's dead she's dead!_"

Watching Tiffany's zombie-movie-like gait and noticing the drying streams of blood running down the masked girl's neck and shoulders, Daria quickly concurred. "Tiffany," she yelled sternly, "I don't know if there's anything of you left in there to hear me, but . . . stay back! Just stay the hell back!"

The walking corpse raised its hands like claws and clumsily made its way toward the sisters heedlessly.

"Dammit, of course, she wouldn't have listened to me even if she was alive," Daria grumped quickly before pulling the jack handle back further then slamming it into Tiffany's collar. Her target dropped to one knee and twisted around until her body was contorted in a way no human could do without causing serious pain.

"What are you _doing?_" Quinn yelled, trying to grab Daria's arm. The older girl shook her off, then reached down and quickly flipped the mask off of Tiffany's face, causing her to flop to the ground, dead once again.

"Saving us!" Daria snarled back. She pointed at the gory hole still clearly visible in the side of Tiffany's head. "You were right, she _is_ dead!"

"DARIA! QUINN! Are you two ALRIGHT?"

The girls turned to see Mr. DeMartino running their way. Quinn was about to yell out that no, of course they weren't alright when Daria called out a warning to the history teacher. It came too late, however, as DeMartino only managed to look over his shoulder just before Kevin crashed into him, gripping him by the midsection to lift him up and then slam him to the ground.

Anthony had the wind knocked out of him, but the tire iron stayed firmly in his hand. He swung it up to smack the mask off of Kevin's face, but the young football player caught his hand easily and ripped the tool away from him. With Kevin sitting across his waist, his hands knocked away, and his head swimming, DeMartino was unable to do anything but watch helplessly as the iron came down and pierced the left side of his torso.

Breathing was painful, as if his entire chest was filled with fire. With a strange clarity born of that pain, he could tell that the tool had missed his heart, but it had broken straight through one of his ribs and punctured his lung before exiting his back and getting buried in the ground below. The clarity fuzzed as he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness from sheer system overload. His extremities were already starting to feel cold from the shock, but numbly he forced them up to grasp the sides of Kevin's mask and yank it away.

Kevin's dead body fell on top of him. The mask seemed to melt away between his fingers. He barely heard the screaming of the women around him as he slipped away, a grim smirk on his face and thoughts of bitter irony sluggishly turning in his gradually slowing brain.

Daria and Claire grabbed on to Quinn and Sandi, grouped everyone together, and started backing away from the three corpses. The Fashion Club members were pure hysterics, and both teacher and older sister felt that they weren't too far off themselves.

Shouts from behind them set of a fresh round of screams, but it was only Jane and Stacy running toward them, their faces etched with worry.

"What's happening?" Jane asked once they were within proper earshot. "Is he back? What's going on?"

"Did you get the supplies? Where are they?" Daria returned, agitated as she half-dragged, half-carried Quinn away from the bodies.

"We dropped them when we heard the screams!" Jane said, getting annoyed herself. She and Stacy reached the group then turned to walk with them. "What the hell happened?"

Claire pulled Sandi along. "We can't stay here," she said. "The Goggle Eyes Man . . . he's taking over dead bodies now."

Jane looked back in alarm, noticing the still shapes on the ground for the first time. "Oh, _shit_."

"He's getting stronger," Stacy said, her voice wavering in mounting fear. "Every person he kills is making him stronger!"

"We have to assume she's right," said Daria, "so let's not give him any more fuel. We grab whatever you brought from the gas station and then hole up in our room."

"No no no!" Stacy grabbed onto her arm and shook her head violently. "If he can take over the dead, he might be able to take over the people that are still asleep, too!"

Daria stopped walking and cursed. The entire group stopped with her as she bared her teeth in frustration. "Fine, we stop there to grab my and Jane's boots, then we go we go we go . . . _dammit!_"

"_Our_ room!" Quinn gasped. Her eyes still rolled a bit wildly, but she had calmed down enough to do more than simply cry. "There was only me, Sandi, Tiffany, and Tori there! It'll be empty!"

"Okay, right, we pick up the food, then the boots, then we go back to Fashion Club HQ. And we do it as a _group_. No one gets out of sight from the rest of the pack, no one gets near a body - sleeping, dead, or otherwise - unless they are with the group, and we're going to move as quickly as possible! Got it?"

Everyone nodded at her. With equal measures of grim determination and absolute fear, Daria led them forward once again. 


	5. REM

The motel room seemed a little cramped at first with six people and two large garbage bags occupying it, but as soon as they were all inside and the door was locked, the women set to fixing that problem and another at the same time.

After moving the table and chairs to the side, they combined their strength to lift one of the beds on its side, then maneuvered it over to sit across the window. The second bed was then pushed across the room to brace against the matress of the first. Though the air conditioning unit forced the entire arrangement to sit a few inches away from the window, anyone who tried to come at them that way would have to take time squeezing through if they even could, giving the women time to react.

Once they had finished, the group fragmented across the room. Stacy, feeling completely worn out, stumbled over to one of the chairs, slumped down into it, and closed her eyes. She had only been sitting that way for a few moments when she felt something being lightly set into her lap. Startled, she opened her eyes to see Sandi nearby, picking up one of her bags and rapidly following Quinn to the bathroom.

To her amazement, she looked down to see her sneakers sitting across her legs.

"So, what's the plan, amiga?" Jane asked as she and Daria finally took a moment to put on their own footwear. Daria pulled her laces tight, then dropped them and rubbed her hands over her eyes.

"I don't know," said Daria. Even more than usual, her deeply monotone voice conveyed a feeling of defeat, but it held a heavy undercurrent of weariness rather than the typical cynicism. "Sit here, I guess. Eat and drink and don't fall asleep, I guess. When dawn hits, maybe we'll have thought of something else."

Claire squeezed the young girl's shoulder sympathetically. Hearing the bone-tired tone of Daria's voice made her realize just how tired she was herself, so she stood up from the bed and opened one of the bags from the convenience store. After picking out something for herself and setting it on the table, she started handing out chips and soda to Jane, Daria, and Stacy.

Jane accepted the late night snack, set it down next to her chair, then reached over to dig through the second bag to pull out a lighter and an unopened pack of cigarettes. The others watched silently as she took a few moments to figure out the cellophane wrapper on the outside and the foil cover on the inside. With the contents finally freed from their freshness seals, she fished one out, popped it in her mouth, and inexpertly lit it. Her first drag was obviously harsh, as her eyes immediately watered and she began to cough.

"You don't smoke," Daria finally said after the coughing jag had died down.

"Nope," Jane confirmed, wiping at the corners of her eyes. "But it seems like we're all about to die anyway. Good time to start."

"I think these are non-smoking rooms."

Instead of replying, Jane simply squinted at Daria through the smoke as she took a longer and somewhat smoother pull. Without looking away, she reached back, groped around on the nightstand for a moment, then finally found and held up an ashtray. Daria stared back hard before holding out her hand.

"Gimme one," she said.

Claire, who had been tapping her fingers on her thigh nervously since the pack had come out, let out a heavy groan. "Oh, what the hell," she sighed. "I can always quit a second time, right?"

Stacy hesitated only momentarily before joining the other three. They situated the table and chairs next to the bedside so they could all easily reach the complimentary ashtray as well as have a surface on which to eat. Besides the occasional cough, munch of junk food, and hiss of escaping carbonation, the meal was quiet until Quinn emerged from the bathroom dressed in her day clothes and with her makeup fixed.

"Oh, thank _God_," she said as she accepted a cigarette from Jane's pack. Her moan was almost orgasmic as twin trails of smoke shot from her nostrils.

"I don't suppose you picked up any slims or ultra-lights, did you?" was the first thing Sandi asked when she too rejoined the group.

"Well, if we're going to just be sitting around until morning, we should probably find out how much longer it will be," Claire suggested while handing out food and drink to Quinn and Sandi.

Sandi took the energy drink Ms. DeFoe proffered, then turned her wrist to look at her watch. "3:10," she announced.

Daria's brow knitted as she shook her head. "That can't be right," she said. "It was a few minutes after three when we left the office. That was at least half an hour ago."

"Mmm. More like forty-five minutes," Jane corrected her around a mouthful of spongecake.

"My watch says 3:09," Quinn chimed in quizzically. "Fifty-six seconds, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-ni-" Her eyes widened in surprised then contracted in anger. "No way! I just got this watch and its already broken?"

"What happened?" Daria asked, her voice suddenly tense.

"The seconds are still counting, but it still says 3:09! Honestly, Cashman's is _so_ getting a nasty letter when I get home."

"Um, guys? Mine just did the same thing." Sandi held her wrist out to show that the display on her own watch read only a handful of seconds into 3:10. Everyone sat and glanced back and forth at each other as the implications already started to sink in.

Daria jumped up from the bed and snatched the TV remote from the nightstand. The set on the dresser flared to life and flickered several times as she rapidly flipped through the channels. When she hit upon the station she wanted, she stopped and chewed on one of her thumbs as she watched local ads scroll across a primary blue background while vaguely rock-ish music played. Local temperature and weather alerts sat in one corner of the screen while the current time ticked by in another. The seconds mounted painfully slow until they finally switched from 59 to double zeroes. The 3:12 sitting next to those zeroes remained steady, and the music jumped noticeably to an earlier verse in the song.

"You have got to be shitting me," Daria swore quietly to herself.

"What's going on? What does that mean?" asked Sandi. "Has time, like, stopped or something?"

Stacy whimpered. "I told you the Goggle Eyes Man was getting stronger."

"Let's not jump to any conclusions," Claire said, gesturing for calm. "If he really was the one that sabotaged the phones, then maybe he can effect other electronic devices as well. This could just be a scare tactic to rattle us."

"Doubt we need to state the obvious about how effective it is," Jane laughed. "But yah, Ms. DeFoe is probably right. I mean, hey, I'm already on board with the guy being a ghost who can possess people, so I'm ready to buy just about anything, but being able to stop time still seems a bit far-fetched, right?"

Daria spoke while continuing to stare stonily at the television. "If it really was a little after three when we checked the clock last, then we'll know for sure in just a couple of hours. Maybe shorter than that depending on when the sky starts getting light."

Claire nodded and said, "Okay, so until then we should just concentrate on staying awake. How's everyone feeling?"

"I'm already starting to feel a little wired," Quinn told her as she stubbed out her cigarette.

"You're always a little wired, princess," Jane said with a smirk as she laid the pack of smokes on the table and slid it across to the redhead.

Quinn stifled a harsh retort when she saw the friendly smirk on Jane's face as well as the haunted uneasiness that it was trying to hide. "Yah," she said simply, smiling back and taking one of the cigarettes. "Thanks."

"We should probably . . . chat or something," Claire suggested. "Anything to keep us from zoning out or accidentally nodding off."

Daria switched off the TV. "Oh, goody," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "extended conversation with a teacher, my sister, and my sister's snotty friends. _That's_ guaranteed to keep me awake." She blinked a few times and frowned. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that out loud." The frown deepened and she turned her face away from the group. "Dammit. I'm sorry again. That just sounded worse. I'm . . . I have to use the bathroom. Excuse me."

"Daria, wait!" Claire called after her, but the young girl had already disappeared into the other room and closed the door.

* * *

Sitting on the closed lid of the ancient looking toilet, Daria stared at her hands and blinked back forming tears.

Anthony DeMartino, the only teacher at school that had actually seemed to like her - in his own agitated way, of course - was dead. Tori Jericho, Sandi and Ms. DeFoe had told her, had also been killed. Daria had barely known the girl, but she was still a human being and worthy of mourning. The murderer who had taken them and so many others that night had poured so many horrific circumstances on the gradually shrinking group of survivors, and with the addition of an apparent mastery over time itself, ripping away what seemed to be their last chance at finally being saved . . . it was getting to be too much.

Daria was so wrapped up in her own misery that it took her a few seconds to realize someone was softly knocking at the door. "What?" she asked flatly.

"I just need to go," said the voice on the other side of the door.

With a lethargic grunt of exertion, Daria slumped forward and twisted the doorknob, popping the lock. The other girl slipped in, closed the door, and locked it behind her before Daria could manage to get off of her seat.

"I don't really need to go," Stacy told her apologetically. She stood with her hands behind her back, gripping the doorknob in what seemed to be an intentional move to block the exit.

Daria leaned back, put her glasses on the sink counter, and rubbed her eyes with a sigh. "Then what do you want?"

Stacy ground the toe of her shoe into the bluish-white tile of the floor as she worked on formulating her next sentence. "We just . . . we're supposed to stay in a group, right?" she finally said. "It's safer that way. You said."

"Yes. I said. But I've got this insomnia thing going on right now. I'm tired, but I'm not sleepy. I solemnly promise that I won't bust out of this bathroom and disembowel any of you. Not because I've become possessed by the Ghost of Paintball Past, anyway," Daria amended under her breath. "So why'd they send you, anyway? I mean, I just called you snotty. That can't really put me high on your list of people you want to be shut in a tiny, smelly room with."

"Well, that _was_ a little unfair," Stacy remarked. "_Sandi_ is the snotty one. I'm just flaky."

Daria snorted in laughter despite herself. "I didn't think the Fashion Club allowed its members to make jokes."

"I think we might be changing the by-laws soon, so I might as well get a little practice in now," Stacy said, trying her best at a mischievous grin. It faded after a moment as she grew serious once again. "Actually, Jane and Quinn both wanted to come in here to talk to you, but they didn't want to do it together for some reason. When Ms. DeFoe chimed in, saying something about how it should be a teacher taking care of things, I . . . I just decided to sneak away from them and check on you myself."

"The flaky comes to check on the flaker?" Daria leaned against the counter and rested her head on her hand. "The blind leading the et cetera?"

Stacy looked at her, confused. "I'm . . . not sure what that means. But . . . well, Jane said some nice things to me earlier, and since you're Jane's friend, I thought I might try and say something nice to you to try and pay that back. And you're, like, our leader, right? We need you to help us figure out what's going on."

Daria turned her face away from Stacy. When she spoke, her voice - already heavy with weariness - deepened even further with anger. "Your _leader_," she snarled. "If I hadn't come up with that stupid plan in the first place, Tori and DeMartino might still be alive. We wouldn't be stuck in this room until a morning that might never come. We should have stayed in a group in the first place."

Stacy fidgeted nervously for a moment before saying, "You didn't know he could do that."

"Do what?" Daria asked miserably.

"You didn't know the Goggle Eyes Man could take over dead people. If we'd all been there when he took over Brittany, he probably would have gotten one of us anyway. Maybe more. The whole thing, it was just so much of a surprise. We thought we were safe when we weren't. It's not your fault."

There was an awkward pause. Then, "You need to stop talking like that or I'm going to start liking you."

"Thanks, Daria, but you're really not my type," Stacy said with a half-grin.

Daria laughed, sighed, and swiped her hands across her face before putting her glasses back on. "You're right," she said. "It was a good plan, I'm a good person, and we've all learned an important lesson for the future. Don't trust anyone, even if they're dead. Especially if they're dead.

"We just don't know enough about this thing, whatever it is. At least it seems that for the moment, he can't take over people who are awake, but we should all keep an eye on each other anyway. Let's get back out there and waste some time, shall we?"

* * *

"-so then Fluffy gets this wide-eyed look, spins around like a top, and then runs at the edge of the curtain," Sandi was saying as the rest of the women around the table were either chuckling or all-out laughing. "Only the poor thing didn't realize that the curtain was overlapping the door frame, so he ran right into it." She slapped one hand against the other for emphasis. "SMACK!"

The laughter reached new heights, and Sandi was trying hard to keep her own giggles suppressed as she continued the story. "H-he sat back on his hind legs and looked at the curtain all dizzy for a second before getting up and slipping around the edge like absolutely nothing had happened!"

Caffeine and nicotine fueled mirth filled the room for several minutes, leaving none of them capable of hearing another story even if they had been able to stop laughing long enough to tell one. Even Daria, who most of the group had never even heard so much as chuckle, was leaning over the table and letting out heavy guffaws.

"Whuh-why didn't he just go _under_ the curtain?" Jane asked once things had finally started to calm down.

Sandi wiped tears from her eyes, chortled, and said, "I have, like, no freakin' clue!" A fresh spate of laughter rose up and died down, leaving the smoky room in a surprisingly comfortable silence.

"Well, girls, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm starting to feel a little grimy," Claire announced. "Normally I might get taken up on sexual harassment charges for asking a student to join me in the bathroom while I take a shower, but I think under the circumstances . . . "

"I'll go with you, Ms. DeFoe," Sandi volunteered as she stood up. "Like, I think I need to check my makeup again anyway."

Daria reached down, picked up the bus jack handle, and tossed it lightly to the other girl. "Just in case," she said.

Sandi thanked her as she and Claire walked toward the bathroom. Once inside, she turned to the mirror, wet a washcloth, and started wiping at her face while the art teacher stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain closed before disrobing and throwing her nightclothes out onto the floor. When she turned the water on, Sandi flipped the switch for the overhead vent so the mirror wouldn't fog over while she worked.

"So, Sandi," Claire called out over the noise, "I know we were all laughing about Fluffy running into the wall, but he _was_ okay afterward, right?"

"Oh, yes. He's a little, like, special, you know? So he does these weird things all the time, but he's just fine. I think it, like, startled him more than anything."

"Well that's good. I used to have a hamster, myself. He would go running around the loft, getting into everything whenever I let him out of his cage for a while, and I would worry he'd get into something that might hurt him."

They idly chatted about past pets for a few minutes while Claire washed and Sandi reapplied her makeup. The main reasons for talking were to help them stay awake and to assure each other that they hadn't been possessed, but Claire was also enjoying simply connected with the teenagers, especially Sandi who had always taken a disdainful attitude toward such interactions before. It was nice to hear her just being a normal person instead of trying to be queen of the school.

Despite their best efforts to keep the conversation going, however, it eventually hit a lull. Claire could hear the hissing sound of hair spray on the other side of the curtain and figured that Sandi probably wouldn't be able to hear her very well until she was finished anyway, so the teacher set her head against the side of the stall and took a moment to simply enjoy the shower.

The warm water flowing down her skin and through her hair felt good, and the steam wafting through her nose was even more refreshing than she had hoped it would be. She closed her eyes and took in the mixed smells of soap and shampoo. Her jaw began to go slack and she vaguely realized that she was starting to nod off, sending up a veritable forest of red flags in her head.

But as she reached up to pull the mask down into place, some far off voice that didn't sound at all like her own softly pondered if it was such a bad thing.

Finally finished bringing herself back up to the highest level of perfection she could reach with the limited supplies at her disposal, Sandi squared everything away on top of the counter, then sat on the closed toilet to wait for Ms. DeFoe to finish. Talking with the art teacher wasn't, strangely enough, as big a deal as she had generally thought doing so would be. DeFoe was something of an old-fashioned hippie chick, it was true, but eventually such styles became retro again. She couldn't really be faulted for being unstylish during the down cycle if she knew it would come back later, could she?

Sandi's attempt at rationalization was cut short when the shower curtain was violently pushed aside and Ms. DeFoe lunged out to grip the young girl's neck and mouth. Sandi let out a muffled scream and tried to reach for the jack handle on the counter, but Claire yanked her up from her seat, dragged her over to the sink, and planted the back of her head into the mirror.

The glass scattered all around Sandi as she clawed vainly at Claire's wrists and hands. Though sure that no one in the motel room could hear her attempts to call for help, she fervently hoped that someone had at least heard the mirror break over the sound of streaming water and ventilating fan.

That hope was lost as the masked woman removed her hand from Sandi's neck only to replace it with the sharp edge of a mirror sliver. Even if the other girls had heard the noise, they wouldn't be in time to save Sandi from bleeding out from the gaping wound in her freshly slit throat.

* * *

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear wha-"

Quinn trailed off into a scream as Ms. DeFoe stepped out of the bathroom completely nude except for a paintball mask. Daria's jack handle rested firmly in one of the teacher's hands while a piece of glass slowly dripped blood from the other.

"Get out get out!" Jane yelled as she threw a full bottle of soda at Claire's head and started pushing the others toward the door. "_Get out now!_"

Stacy was the first to reach the exit and was nearly smashed against it as the other girls pressed forward. Barely aware of what she was doing in her fright, she fumbled on the deadlock with numb fingers, losing precious seconds of escape time before she managed to flip it over and pull the door open.

Claire had dodged the thrown bottle and was already almost caught up with them as they spilled out into the parking lot. The jack handle swished through the air right behind Jane's head as the raven-haired girl continued trying to push the others ahead. Just like with the other attacks the masked killer was moving slowly, walking along behind them as they ran, allowing them to get a lead.

It wasn't enough of one. Once clear of the overhang, Claire pulled the handle back and flung it, catching Jane square in the lower back with a sharp _crack!_ Jane fell with a cry and hit the ground hard. She hadn't been able to get her hands under her, so she slapped the asphalt fully with the front of her torso and the left side of her face. She could feel the cuts and scrapes small pebbles and the rough surface of the lot left on her cheek and eyebrow, but strangely enough she couldn't feel her legs.

She tried to push herself up and get to her feet, but she realized to her horror that she couldn't finish the movement. Everything below the spot where the handle had hit her had gone numb and wouldn't respond to her mental commands. Looking up she could see that Stacy, Quinn, and Daria had stopped and were heading back to her, while looking over her shoulder showed her that Claire was almost upon her. Even though the teacher was completely naked, Jane couldn't imagine a less erotic image.

"Keep going!" she shouted at the other girls as she began scrabbling for fingerholds in the asphalt and pulling herself forward. "Forget about me! Just _get out of here!_"

"_NO!_" Daria bellowed. She tried to rush back to help her friend, but Stacy and Quinn grabbed her arms and were just barely able to hold her.

"There's nothing we can do!" Quinn shouted, tears streaming down her face once again.

"Look at her!" Stacy yelled in Daria's other ear. "I want to help her too, but just _look_ at her!"

Looking down through her own blurry eyes, Daria finally noticed Jane's legs, tangled and unmoving as they dragged along behind the crawling girl. She continued to struggle and call out to Jane, but her attempts became weaker and weaker, allowing Quinn and Stacy to pull her further away.

Claire reached Jane just as the other girls had reached the nearest rental bus. When she flipped Jane over, Jane spat up at her and yelled defiantly, "Yah, bitch! That's right! _Come get some!_"

True to that defiance, Jane tried her best to fight back, but it was difficult to keep up once her belly had been sliced open by the sharp edge of Claire's jagged mirror.

Hidden within the maze of buses, Quinn had Daria propped against one of the vehicles and was trying to get her to pay attention to anything other than the grisly slaughter of her best friend.

"Look at me, Daria," Quinn said, her voice cracking. "Just look at me! We need you to get us out of here, okay? You told me if you started breaking down, I should help you keep going, right? Well this is me, trying to help you keep going. I know Jane's-" She grabbed her sister by the chin and turned the girl's face back to her as Daria tried to run back out again. "I know what's happening to Jane, but you've gotta be _strong_, dammit, or we're gonna die, too! You've-"

"_Quinn, look out!_"

Quinn jerked her head around at Stacy's warning, and for a second she was amazed at just how fast and how far she could turn her head in an emergency. She caught a brief glimpse of Kevin standing behind her before she collapsed to the ground. She was dead before she ever realized that the masked football player had snapped her neck.

Kevin's closed eyes stared through the mask's goggles at Daria, who dully stared back without any visible emotion. Stacy screamed and shrank against the side of one of the buses, but neither of them payed her any attention. After what seemed like an eternity, Kevin turned on his heel and stalked off, leaving the two girls behind.

Stacy stared at Quinn's corpse and Daria's still form, her terrified mind trying to process what had just happened. Knowing that she might be making a mistake but also knowing that she had to figure out why the killer had left them alone, she edged around to the end of the bus and looked out to see Kevin approaching Ms. DeFoe.

The teacher was kneeling down next to Jane's body. She was crying and rocking back and forth while running her hands like claws through her wet hair, leaving behind red streaks of blood. She didn't even seem to notice as Kevin walked around to pick up the nearby jack handle. Stacy quickly swung around so she wouldn't see what came next, but she still heard the dull crack echo out across the lot.

"Daria? Daria, _please!_" she begged, running back to the other girl. "We're the only ones left! We have to do something! Please! I can't do this on my own! _Please!_"

There was no response from Daria. Her expression remained blank, and even though her eyes were open she simply stared straight through Stacy as if no one was there. It was as if Daria had completely shut down, leaving behind nothing but a husk. There was a word for that sort of thing, but Stacy couldn't remember exactly what it was, though an image of Sandi's cat Fluffy incongruously flitted through her mind.

Feeling as if she were about ready to crawl inside herself and never come out again as well, Stacy staggered backward until she was leaning against the bus on the opposite side. All of the energy fled her body, leaving her unable to muster any kind of surprise when Daria reached up and pulled a paintball mask down over her face.

Stacy stood up straight and slowly circled the masked girl. "No," she said thickly, shaking her head. "No."

"_Yessssssssssss . . . _"

The voice that came from behind the mask was by no stretch of the imagination Daria's. It sounded as if it were coming from a great distance, strained with effort and dripping with malice. Daria stood and turned to face Stacy. She tilted her head curiously to one side as she began to move toward her prey.

"_No!_" Stacy shouted. "Who _are_ you? What do you _want?_"

Daria stopped and lifted her hand. The index finger of that hand pointed right at Stacy. "_Yooooooooouuuuu . . . _"

"Me? What did I do?"

"_Not . . . doooooo,_" the creature inside Daria snarled. "_What you . . . haaaaaaaaave. Your haaaaaaate._"

Stacy's jaw dropped. "That's not true! I don't hate _any_body!"

Daria chuckled, a wet, disgusting noise. "_Yesssssss,_" she hissed. "_So much . . . **hate!** Killed those . . . you hate . . . for yooooooooou . . . _"

"I didn't-! I _didn't-!_" Stacy faltered. She knew the Goggle Eyes Man couldn't be right. She never hated anyone. It was against her nature. Wasn't it? Of course it was! But even if it wasn't . . .

"I didn't hate Ms. DeFoe!" she said. "She just wanted to help me!"

A violent, angry hiss escaped Daria. "_Don't need . . . teachers! Don't need . . . help! Only need . . . **me!** Wear . . . the maaaaaaaask!_"

"You want me to-?" Stacy gasped. "Oh my God!"

"_Yesssssss! Bond . . . willingly! Repressed hate . . . make you stroooooong! Release it! Kill anyone . . . you want!_"

Stacy shook her head violently. "But why _me?_" she demanded to know. "Why not Daria, or Sandi? They hate so many more things than I do! Why not them?"

The killer started making slow steps forward again. "_Daria . . . second choice. You . . . kill her. Take mask. Or she . . . kill you._"

"And you win either way, right?"

Daria nodded as Stacy stopped her gradual retreat at the edge of the buses. The braided girl's demeanor began to change as Daria continued advancing. Her shoulders squared as her back straightened, and the fear in her facial expression slowly shifted to anger as she spoke.

"You're right," she said, her voice taking on an edge of steel. "I _do_ hate. I hate that everyone who died tonight did so because of me, and I didn't even know it until now. I hate that so many people have lost friends and family over this. I hate that people I didn't think very much of before were killed just as I was starting to actually make friends with them. It looked like even _Sandi_ was going to start treating me better, like a real person instead of just some servant! I hate that you've taken all of this away from me and from them, but most of all . . . _I hate **YOU!**_

"So, you want me? Come and get me, you stupid bitch."

Without another word, Stacy turned and stalked off around the front of the bus. Daria followed around the corner, intent on claiming her prize, but the other girl was nowhere to be seen.

Moving to the other side of the bus revealed more lot empty save for the history teacher's body, still pinned to the ground by the tire iron sticking out of his chest. Further back sat the car by which Tiffany's corpse was sitting, far too far away for Stacy to have reached in time to hide behind. A scraping sound caught Daria's attention, and she dropped to look under the bus just in time to see Stacy's sneakers running toward the back of the vehicle.

With infinite patience, Daria followed around from the other side. The girl tromped her boots as she walked with no worries regarding stealth. She was too powerful. Her prey had nowhere to go. Stacy would would eventually be cornered and she would have to decide between perfect symbiosis or a brutal death.

Walking along the back end of the line of buses, Daria checked each space as well as under each vehicle as she passed. By the time she had reached the roadside, however, it was evident that Stacy was either gone from the area or had gotten into one of the buses to hide. Neither would save her.

The killer opened Daria's senses, allowing her to see the death, misery, despair, and hate that pervaded the motel parking lot. Sniffing at the ebb and flow of mental energy around her like a bloodhound, she caught on to several threads of familiar emotion and took a moment to follow each to its source.

The corpses in the lot still had their own particular "smell", especially those that had died only recently. Jane and Claire had the odor of helplessness around them, streaked through with anger and disbelief. DeMartino still roiled with rage, red and sharp but far too focused for the killer's tastes. Tiffany was barely readable, as virtually all of her mental energy had been turned inward. She had been useless except as a distraction.

Ah, Kevin. His emotional scent was almost entirely neutral yet extremely pervasive. Unfocused feelings that ran high but shallow, making him unsuitable for a host but quite useful as a puppet. The killer momentarily considered leaving Daria's body for his to help speed the hunt along but decided it would be improper and pointless. The hunt's conclusion was inevitable with or without sneaky tricks.

Finally, the thread of Stacy's repressed hatred. Such a beautiful bouquet of festering evil within her, just waiting for her to take just the right amount of outside stimuli to cause an explosion. Resentment, envy, confusion, anger, disappointment, all bottled up like a fine wine and primed to perfection by the events of the night.

The scent twirled and mixed lightly with the heavy but slowly fading passive-aggressive thread of Sandi's emotions, pinpointing the location of Daria's prey. With slow but determined steps, Daria walked around the buses once more before making a straight line for the Fashion Club's former room, only stopping to pick up the jack handle along the way.

The door to the room was halfway closed. Daria used the handle to push it slowly inward, expecting an attack at any moment. When none came, she stepped inside and looked around to find the main room empty and exactly as the women had left it in their earlier panic. The cigarette smoke had mostly cleared out through the open door, but its pungent stench and just a bit of a haze still lingered.

"_Staaaaaacyyyyyyyy,_" the killer called as Daria creeped toward the bathroom door. "_No . . . denyyyyiiiing. No escaaaaaaaape. Come oooooooouuuut . . . _"

Daria stood in front of the door for several moments, but it remained shut and there were no sounds coming from the other side. She finally reached out, turned the knob herself, and found that it was unlocked.

The door swung open to reveal Stacy standing in the middle of the room, a lit cigarette lighter in one hand and Sandi's can of hairspray in the other. Daria barely had time to notice that Sandi's bloody corpse had been moved to the shower stall before a stream of flame engulfed her head.

Though the killer tagging along in her body allowed her to see through her closed eyelids, the fire completely blinded Daria. She staggered back and hit the wall opposite the door before turning to run out of the alcove and into the main room. Stacy quickly followed, having dropped her makeshift flamethrower and picked up the socket wrench Quinn had brought in. She screamed wordlessly as she smacked Daria on the shoulders with the thin tool over and over.

Still half-blind from the first assault, Daria flailed her hands in an attempt to grab the wrench and take it. Just as her vision was starting to clear, however, she saw Stacy toss the wrench aside and grab at the mask with both hands. The mask slipped up and off but was almost immediately back in place, seeming to flow around Stacy's fingers like smoke as it moved.

Daria pulled back a fist and laid it across Stacy's cheek with almost enough force to shatter the bone underneath. Stacy nearly flew across the room and skidded a few inches on the carpet.

The killer laughed evilly. "_This girl . . . **mine!** Get this mask . . . only one way!_"

The voice continue to laugh as Daria moved to grab the discarded wrench. Once it was retrieved, she walked to stand over Stacy as the braided girl dizzily tried to crawl her way back to the bathroom. Just as she reached the door frame and got her hands on it, Daria reached down and gripped her ankle to drag her back.

With a surprising amount of adrenaline-fueled strength, Stacy pulled herself away with a scream that bordered on a full-throated roar. Daria stumbled back, suddenly left holding only a shoe. Recovering quickly, she launched forward with the wrench held high for a strike, but Stacy had already rolled fully into the bathroom.

There was the sound of a flint striking, then the hiss of aerosol spray, and finally the heavy _fwoosh_ of flame scorching its way through the air. Stacy aimed the fire squarely at the mask again, then sent a steady stream down Daria's front as she stood up from a crouch and pressed forward. This time she did not let up, following Daria as the masked girl blindly flailed her way toward the exit.

Unable to see where she was going through the flames that were dancing all around her vision, Daria tripped and tumbled onto the concrete walkway. She felt Stacy's sneakered foot slam into her ribs a few times before a fresh hit from the flamethrower scorched the exposed skin of her legs.

She started rolling across the parking lot in an attempt to put the fire out, but Stacy was on her the entire time, trying to light her up again every time she came close to succeeding. With an enraged cry of frustration followed quickly by a shriek of pain, Stacy put a halt to Daria's rolling by stomping down on the girl's chest. Even as the flames started licking up across her own clothes and skin, Stacy quickly dropped down to hold Daria with her knee instead of her foot.

Before Daria or the killer in her could react, they felt the sharp point of something small, thin, and metal slice down into the side of Daria's throat.

"I'm sorry!" Stacy was crying out, the tears and pain evident in her voice. "_I'm so sorry!_"

The tiny blade pulled out of Daria's neck and then pierced her again a few inches over. Stacy yelled and screamed and cried as she plunged the weapon down again and again. Gradually, the gouges grew less and less painful as the strength began to flee Daria's tortured body. Her skin was still burning, her neck was nothing but a mass of bloody injuries, and she could no longer breathe, but it hardly seemed to matter.

Darkness consumed her, taking all of her pain with it.

* * *

With a long, ear-splitting shriek of primal rage and sorrow, Stacy pulled herself away from Daria and rolled across the ground. Patches of burned flesh dotted her hands as well as along her forearms and left leg where the flames had gotten through her clothing. Even many places on her that hadn't been actually touched by fire screamed at her, and overall she felt as if she had been quite literally _cooked_.

She continued to scream as she writhed on the ground, trying to do anything - _any_thing - she could to make the searing pain go away. After what felt like hours but could have only been seconds at most, it finally subsided to something only just bearable. She could tell that she could get up if she wanted to do so, but at that point getting up was the last thing she wanted. Tossing her gore-covered nail file aside, she tried to curl up into a ball, but doing so make her burnt skin stretch and put her in agony once more.

Once she felt that she had completely cried herself out, she wearily and gingerly picked herself up and looked around. Daria's body had almost completely caught fire from the knees up to the top of her head. The mask was nowhere to be seen, so Stacy looked over where Jane, Claire, and Kevin were laying. They, too, remained unmasked from what she could see.

The idea of going to check on the other bodies made her feel sick to her stomach, and she found that she couldn't walk very fast anyway due to her injuries. Through the strange, vague connection with the Goggle Eyes Man she had been feeling throughout the night, she knew that as the only one left alive and awake, she was his last chance to bond with anyone. The only other thing he could do would be to use one of the dead bodies to kill her, and since it had taken almost everything she'd had - both emotionally and physically - to kill Daria, she felt at that moment that dying wouldn't really be that bad of a thing.

_At least I can do it in some kind of comfort,_ she thought as she began to limp her way back toward Nick's Inn.

She was just stepping out onto the road separating the two motels when she saw it sitting on the painted divider line. The viewport of the mask seemed to stare up at her expectantly, and she could hear the killer's strange voice as if it were drifting by on the wind.

_Staaaaacyyyyyy . . . _

"Go away," she said, kicking the mask aside with her unshod foot and continuing her trek across the road.

_Staaaaacyyyyyy . . . _

There it was again, sitting on the narrow dirt embankment between the street and the parking lot. Stacy ignored it as she continued on her way, but once more it was sitting on the ground in front of her a few yards ahead.

_Put it on,_ the voice commanded. _Take your place. Put it on._

"No," she told it firmly. As she passed it for the third time, it didn't reappear in front of her but continued to speak as she walked.

_You killed her. You showed your hate. We are one. Put the mask on. We can do so much together. Put the mask on._

Stacy stopped and hung her head. "_No,_" she snarled through her teeth.

_This is what you want. This is what you've always wanted. Express yourself. Make your opinion count. Keep away those who hurt you. Get revenge. We can do this if you just put. The mask. ON!_

"I won't! I _won't!_" Stacy shouted, covering her ears in an attempt to block out the voice.

_WEAR THE MASK! PUT IT ON! **PUT ON THE MASK!**_

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

She turned, limped as quickly as she could over to the mask, and then began stomping on it, punctuating each smash with "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" The lens of the viewport cracked and then shattered after repeated strikes, and cracks began to form down the center from the top and bottom. After a few moment, she dropped down to her knees and began pounding the faceplate with her fists, bloodying her knuckles but not caring.

Finally, she picked the mask up, put the front of it against her knee, and pulled the edges back until the entire thing split in half, right down the middle. She lifted the two pieces to the sky and howled into the night, then threw them back down on the ground with all of the strength she had left.

She looked around in confusion and blinked at the morning light that was suddenly hitting her eyes. Off in the distance, the sun sat just barely covered by the horizon, surrounded by bright blue that faded gradually into retreating darkness. The stars, so prominent just seconds before, were completely gone from the cloudless sky. A heavy rumbling sound startled her, and she whipped her head around to see an old-model pickup truck trundling down the road, a bored looking but very awake man sitting at the wheel.

Looking back down, Stacy saw that she was still the same as she had been before. Both she and her clothing still had burnt patches, her hands were covered in blood, and the pieces of the broken paintball mask sat just a few feet away.

Weariness clamped down on her mind and body even heavier than before. Mustering the will to stand back up, she limped the last of the way back to her room, slid inside, and made her way to her side of the far bed. She sat down and slipped her single sneaker off, then reached into her bag momentarily.

Without bothering to even pull the covers back over herself, Stacy snuggled against her stuffed cat and immediately drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

_The little girl desperately wishes to be anywhere else._

The hospital she's been living at since the police and the judge and the lawyers and the doctors decided she couldn't live at home anymore is not very much fun. They let her keep Mr. Lumpkins, and she's happy for that, but they keep asking her the same questions over and over again, and the answer is always the same.

The Goggle Eyes Man did it.

They know that she killed Daria, and she doesn't dispute that. She had to. But they keep asking her about how and why everyone else who had been involved had killed each other. And she tells them. But they don't believe her. Instead, they tell her that until she can give them more information to help with their investigation or she at least proves that she no longer thinks some supernatural boogeyman that doesn't exist caused all of the deaths, she has to stay in their custody.

She sighs sadly to herself because she knows that neither of those conditions will ever be met. They will never accept what she tells them, and she knows for certain that he was real.

Her burns have long since ceased to hurt, but scarred flesh still marks her hands, arms, and leg, serving as proof enough to her that everything happened the way she said it did. The old her might have been dismayed at the ugly blemishes marring her body - not to mention the sweatpants and tank top she wears most days - but the new her, the her that was born out of the tragic events of that horrible night . . . that her wears them like badges of pride. She is still here. She is still in control of her own mind.

She has survived.

Closing her dream diary and setting it aside, she stands up and wanders out into the hallway. Since she has shown no inclination toward violence or trying to escape since her internment, she's allowed free reign through most of the facility, even at night. Only the most sensitive areas and the exits are forbidden to her, and though she wants so fervently to be free, she understands these limitations.

Her stomach rumbles, telling her that she is hungry, so she starts making her way to the kitchen. She is hungry a lot these days, especially since she has started working out regularly. Her muscles are small but well-toned, and because of the strength she has built up, she is sometimes allowed to help the orderlies with small lifting and sorting jobs in stock rooms and the like. Of course, she's not supposed to tell anyone about that part.

The kitchen, as usual for this time in the evening, only has a couple of people working, breaking everything down and cleaning it after the dinner meal. Mark and James aren't surprised to see the little girl wandering in so late, having grown accustomed to the fact that she keeps an entirely nocturnal schedule. Despite several attempts by the doctors through both therapy and sedatives, she flatly refuses to sleep during the night, so the cooks always have something ready for her breakfast when she comes in.

She takes the plate that Mark hands her and stuffs a spoonful of grits into her mouth. When she first arrived at the hospital, she hadn't been sure she would like some of the strange foods they offered, but she found grits much to her liking and requested to have them with every meal from that point on.

While chewing thoughtfully on a bit of cornbread, she idly looks around the large kitchen and finds, to her surprise, that there is a third man moving around on the other side of the room. From what she can see around the prep tables and other cooking equipment, it looks like the man is wearing grey coveralls, a ball cap, and some kind of chrome tank strapped to his back.

She calls James over and inquires after the stranger. He looks over, laughs softly, and tells her not to worry, it's just the exterminator. One of the nurses thought she saw a roach, he explains, so the exterminator is spraying just to be sure. Satisfied with the explanation, the little girl says thanks for the food again and turns her attention back to it.

Without any warning, the kitchen plunges into darkness a few minutes later. The girl jerks violently in her seat, and her plate clatters to the floor, scattering what little bit is left of her food. In the perfect blackness, her heart thumps in her chest hard enough that she's sure it can be heard several rooms away at the very least.

Just as suddenly as they went down, the lights come back up. She looks around to see that the exterminator has stopped doing whatever it is he was doing and is simply standing in the middle of the kitchen with his back to her. A quick check shows that Mark and James are gone, probably off fixing up some mop water or something else required for their cleanup. She turns back to the exterminator and stares at his back suspiciously.

The man turns to face her as if he has noticed that she was looking at him. His lower face is obscured by the circular protuberance of a filtered mask, most likely something he put on to keep from directly breathing in fumes from the insecticide. But the upper half is covered only by an oval-shaped piece of clear plastic held out from his face by a black rubber seal. Through this she can clearly see his eyes.

His eyes are closed.

For everyone else in the hospital, the day has just ended. But as she stands up and curls her hands into fists, Stacy Rowe knows that her night has only just begun.

**END**

Roland 'Jim' Lowery  
esn1g(at)yahoo(dot)com

September 21, 2010 


End file.
